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BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS SERIES 

MAKERS OF MODERN MEDICINE 
Lives of the men to whom nineteenth century medical science 
owes most. Second Edition. New York, 1910. ^2.00 net. 

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MAKERS OF ELECTRICITY 

Lives of the men to whom important advances in electricity 
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Sc.D. (London), Professor of Physics at Manhattan College. 
New York, 1909. 

IN PREPARA TION 

MAKERS OF OLD-TIME MEDICINE 

MAKERS OF ASTRONOMY 



THE THIRTEENTH GREATEST OF CENTURIES 

450 pages, 15 illustrations. Second Edition. Catholic 
Summer School Press, New York, 1909. ^2.50 net. 



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CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE 

(First Series. ) Lives of seven founders in physical science who 
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CATHOLIC CHURCHMEN IN SCIENCE 

(Second Series.) Lives of Albertus Magnus, Pope John XXI. 
the ophthalmologist, Guy de Chauliac and Regiomontanus, 
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IN COLLABORATION 
ESSAYS IN PASTORAL MEDICINE 

o'mALLEY and WALSH 

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workers. Longmans, New York, 1906. $2.50 net. 



EDUCATION 



HOW OLD THE NEW 



BY 



JAMES J. WALSH, M.D.,Ph.D.,Litt.D. 

Dean and Professor of the History of Medicine and of Nervous 
Diseases at Fordham University School of Medicine ; Professor of 
Physiological Psychology at the Cathedral College, New York 



T 



NEW YORK 

FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS 

1910 






Copyright, 1910, by 
JAMES J. WALSH 



'H! Al'7n8 91 



TO THE 

Xabier Alumni ^obalitp 

MOST OF THE THOUGHTS CONTAINED IN THIS VOLUME 
WERE ORIGINALLY EXPRESSED AT OUR BREAKFASTS. IT 
SEEMS ONLY FITTING, THEN, THAT ON PRESENTATION TO A 
LARGER AUDIENCE THEY SHOULD BE DEDICATED TO YOU. 

J. J. W. 

Our Lady s Day, August 15, 1910 



PREFACE 

The reason for publishing this volume of lec- 
tures and addresses is the persuasion that present- 
day educators are viewing the history of education 
with short-sighted vision. An impression pre- 
vails that only the last few generations have done 
work of serious significance in education. The 
historj^ of old-time education is neglected, or is 
treated as of at most antiquarian interest and 
there is a failure to understand its true value. 
The connecting link between the lectures and ad- 
dresses is the effort to express in terms of the 
present what educators were doing in the past. 
Once upon a time, when I proclaimed the happi- 
ness of the English workmen of the Middle 
Ages, the very positive objection was raised, 
" How could they be happy since their wages were 
only a few cents a day?" For response it was 
only necessary to point out that for his eight 
cents, the minimum wage by act of Parliament, 
the workman could buy a pair of handmade 
shoes, that being the maximum price established 
by law, and other necessaries at similar prices. 
If old-time education is studied with this same 
care to translate its meaning into modern values, 
then the very oldest education of which we have 
any record takes on significance even for our time. 



vi PREFACE 

While it is generally supposed that there are 
many new features in modern education, it re- 
quires but slight familiarity with educational his- 
tory to know that there is very little that is novel. 
Such supposedly new phases as nature-study and 
technical training and science, physical as well as 
ethical, are all old stories, though they have had 
negative phases during which it would be hard to 
to trace them. The more we know about the his- 
tory of education the greater is our respect for 
educators at all times. Nearly always they had a 
perfectly clear idea of what they were trying to 
do, they faced the problems of education in quite 
the same spirit that we do and often solved them 
very well. Indeed the results of many periods of 
old-time education are much better than our own, 
even when judged by our standards. 

Unfortunately there exists a very common 
persuasion that evolution plays a large role in 
education and that we, " the heirs of all the ages 
in the foremost files of time," are necessarily in 
the forefront of educational advance. There has 
been much progress in education in the last cen- 
tury, but it would, indeed, be a hopeless world 
if there had not been progress out of the depths 
in which education was plunged in the eighteenth 
century. There were a number of reformers in 
education at the end of the eighteenth and the 
beginning of the nineteenth century. It was 
rather easy to be an educational reformer at that 
time. The lowest period in the history of educa- 



PREFACE vii 

tion was about the middle of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. It has been assumed that since we are far 
ahead of that generation we must be still farther 
ahead of the people who preceded them. That 
is the mistake. There are periods of education 
of very great significance centuries long before 
that time. 

In educational lectures and addresses for the 
past five years, I have been trying to translate 
into modern terms the meaning of these old 
periods of education. A great many teachers 
have thought the ideas valuable and suggestive 
and so I am tempted to publish them in book form. 
There is an additional reason, that of wishing to 
create a bond of sympathy between the two sys- 
tems of education that have grown up in this 
country. For some three generations now Catho- 
lic educators have been independently building 
up a system of education from the elementary 
schools to the university. The American world 
of education is coming to recognize how much they 
have accomplished. There has even been some 
curiosity expressed as to how it was all done in 
spite of apparently insuperable obstacles. One 
phase of Catholic education, its thorough-going 
conservatism and definite effort to value the past 
properly and take advantage of its precious les- 
sons, is here represented. 

My own educational interests have been taken 
up much more of late years with medicine than 
with other phases of this subject. Hence the 



viii PREFACE 

volume contains certain addresses relating to the 
history of medical education. They are more in- 
timately linked with the general subject of edu- 
cation than might perhaps be thought. We have 
had finely organized medical education at a num- 
ber of times in the past, and, indeed, at the pres- 
ent moment can find inspiration and incentive in 
studying the legal regulation of medicine and of 
medical education in what might seem to be so- 
unpromising a time as the thirteenth century. 
For true educational progress there has always 
been need of close sympathy between the non- 
professional and the professional department of 
universities. Only when the professional schools 
are real graduate departments, requiring under- 
graduate training for admission, is the university 
doing its work properly. This was the rule in 
the past — hence the precious lessons for the pres- 
ent in the story of these old-time universities. 

These lectures and addresses were actually de- 
livered, not merely read. They were written with 
that purpose. Certain repetitions that would have 
been avoided if the articles had been jDrepared 
directly for reading and not for an audience, may 
be noted. Some of the subjects overlap and cer- 
tain phases had to be treated usually in variant 
form in different lectures. For these faults the 
reader's indulgence is craved. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW ... 3 

n. THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY .... 63 

III. MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES . . 93 

IV. IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 155 

V. CYCLES OF FEMININE EDUCATION AND IN- 
FLUENCE 199 '^ 

VI. THE CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION . 273 ^' 

VIL ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION . . .299 / 

YUI. THE MEDICAL PROFESSION FOR SIX THOU- 
SAND YEARS 349 

IX. UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS . . . .377 

X. THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 403 

XI. NEW ENGLANDISM 433 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 



" Nothing under the sun is new, neither is any man 
able to say : Behold this is new : For it hath already gone 
before in the ages that were before us." — Ecclesiastes 
i: 10. 

" Nullum est jam dictum, quod non dictum sit prius." — 

Terence, Eun. Prol., 41. 

[Nothing is now said which was not said before.] 

St. Jerome relates that his preceptor Donatus, com- 
menting on this passage of Terence, used to say : 
" Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt." 
[May they perish who said our good things before us.] 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW* 

Popular lectures are usually on some very up- 
to-date subject. Indeed, as a rule they are on 
subjects that are developing at the moment, and 
the main aim of the lecturer is to forecast the 
future. It is before a thing has happened that we 
want to know about it now, and though, as not in- 
frequently occurs, the lecturer's forecast does not 
in the event prove him a prophet nor the son of a 
prophet, for nature usually accomplishes her pur- 
poses more simply than the closet philosopher 
anticipates, at least we have the satisfaction for 
the moment of thinking that not only are we up 
to date but a little ahead of it. Unfortunately I 
have to claim your indulgence this evening in this 
matter, for taking just the opposite course. I am 
to talk about the oldest book in the world, its old- 
fashioned yet novel contents, its up-to-date appli- 
cations, and its significance for the history of the 
race and, above all, the history of education. The 

* Material for this lecture was gathered for one of a course of 
lectures on Phases of Education delivered at St. Mary's College, South 
Bend, Ind., at the Sacred Heart Academy, Kenwood, Albany, N. Y., 
and at St. Mary's College, Monroe, Mich., 1909. In somewhat de- 
veloped form it was delivered to the public school teachers of New 
Orleans at the beginning of 1910. In very nearly its present form it 
was the opening lecture at the course of the Brooklyn Institute of 
Arts and Sciences, on " How Old the New Is," delivered in the spring 
of 1910. 

3 



4 EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 

one interesting feature, as I hope, of what I have 
to say, is that old-time methods in education as 
suggested by this Httle volume are strangely fa- 
miliar and its contents are as significant now as 
they were in the old time from which it comes. 
The book was written almost as long before Solo- 
mon as Solomon is before us, yet there is a depth 
of practical wisdom about it that eminently 
recalls the expression " there is nothing new under 
the sun." 

So much attention has been given to education 
in recent years, we have made such a prominent 
feature of it in life, have spent so much money 
on it, have devoted so much time and thought to 
its develoj^ment and organization, that we feel 
very sure that what we are doing now in every 
line of educational effort represents— indeed must 
represent — a great advance over anything and 
everything that was ever accomplished in the past. 
To say anything else would seem to most people 
pure pessimism. It would mean that in spite of all 
the efforts of men we were not making advances. 
As a matter of fact, all of us know that it is quite 
possible to make heroic efforts so sadly misdi- 
rected that they accomplish nothing and get us 
nowhere. Progress depends not on effort but on 
the proper direction of the effort. We are sup- 
posed, however, to represent one phase and that 
at the front rank of an inevitable advance in things 
human, pushed forward, as it were, by the wheel 
of evolution in its ceaseless progress, and bound 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 5 

therefore to make advancement. It is with this 
idea, so commonly accepted, that I would take 
issue by showing how much was accomplished in 
the past that anticipates much of what we are 
occupied with at the present time, and that serves 
to show what men can accomplish at any time 
when they set themselves to doing things with 
high ideals, well-considered purpose and strenuous 
effort. 

There are those who insist that unless men have 
the encouraging feeling that they are making 
progress, their efforts are likely to be less strenu- 
ous than would otherwise be the case. There are 
those who think apparently that compliments 
make the best incentive for successful effort. 
Some of us who know that the world's best work, 
or at least the work of many of the world's great 
men, has been done in the midst of opposition, in 
the very teeth of criticism, in spite of discourage- 
ment, ma}^ not agree with that opinion. The his- 
tory of successful accomplishment seems to show, 
indeed, that incentive is all the stronger as the 
result of the opposition which arouses to renewed 
efforts and the criticism which strips whatever is 
new of errors that inevitably cling to it at the 
beginning. On the other hand, if there is any- 
thing that the lessons of history make clear it 
is that self-complacency is the very worst thing, 
above all for intellectual effort of any kind, and 
that criticism, when judicious, is always beneficial. 

Above all, comparisons are likely to be chasten- 



6 EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 

ing in their effects to make us realize that what 
we are doing at any particular time does not mean 
so much more than what many others have done 
and may indeed even mean less. It is rather in- 
teresting, then, to set our complacent assurance 
that we are doing such wonderful work in educa- 
tion and represent such magnificent progress over 
against some of the educational work of the past. 
After all we are not nearly so self-congratulatory 
about our education, its ways and methods and, 
above all, its success as we were a dozen years ago. 
There are many jarring notes of discordant 
criticism of methods heard, there are many depre- 
catory remarks passed with regard to our sup- 
posed success, and there have been some edu- 
cators unkind enough, — and, unfortunately, they 
are often of the inner circle of our educational 
life, — to say that we are lacking in scholarship 
to a great degree, and that much of our so-called 
educational progress has been a tendency toward 
an accumulation of superficial information rather 
than a training of the intellect for power. The 
absolute need of the distinction between educa- 
tion for information and for power has been 
coming home to us. Above all, we have felt that 
we were not a little deceived by appearances in 
education and so are more ready to listen to sug- 
gestions of various kinds. 

Under these circumstances it has seemed to me, 
that a calling of attention to what was accom- 
plished at certain long-past periods for educa- 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 7 

tion, would not only be of interest as information 
for teachers, but might possibly be helpful or at 
least suggestive, in the midst of the somewhat dis- 
ordered state of mind that has resulted from re- 
cent criticisms of our educational methods and 
success, by men whose interest in education can- 
not be doubted and whose opportunities for know- 
ing are the best. For we are in a time when 
nearly every important educator, president of a 
university, dean of a department, old-time teacher 
or old, thoughtful pupil with the interest of Alma 
Mater at heart, who has had something to say 
with regard to education has said it in rather 
derogatory fashion. Perhaps, then, it will do us 
good to study the periods of the past and see 
what they did, how their methods differed or still 
more often were like our own, what their success 
was like and what we may learn from them. The 
surprising thing is the number of repetitions of 
present-day experiences in education that we shall 
find in the past. This is true, however, in every 
mode of thinking quite as well as in education, 
once careful investigation of conditions is made. 

If we begin at the beginning and take what is 
sometimes called the oldest book in the world, 
we shall see how early definite educational ideas 
took form. It is a set of moral lessons or in- 
structions given, or supposed to be given, by a 
father to his son. The father's name was Ptah 
Hotep. He was a vizier of King Itosi of the 
Fifth Dynasty in Egypt, some time about 3500 B.C. 



8 EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 

The Egyptologists used to date him earher than 
that, but in recent years they have been clipping 
centuries off Egyptian dates until perhaps King 
Itosi must be considered as having lived probably 
not earlier than 3350 B.C. That makes very little 
difference for our purpose, however. The oldest 
manuscript copy of the book was written appar- 
ently not later than 2900 B.C. It exists as the 
famous Prisse Papyrus in the Bibliotheque Na- 
tionale in Paris. There is another copy in the 
British Museum. There is a pretty thorough 
agreement as to these dates, so that we can be sure 
that this little book which has come to be known 
as the Instruction of Ptah Ilotep, or the Proverbs 
of Ptah Hotpu — another form of his name with 
a variation in the title — represents the wisdom of 
the generations who lived in Egypt about 5000 
years ago. It was written, as I have said, almost 
as long before Solomon as Solomon is before us, 
so that the character of the moral instructions 
which it contains is extremely interesting. 

There must have been a number of copies of 
it made. This and books like it were used as 
schoolbooks in Egyj)t. They were employed 
somewhat as we employ copybooks. The writing 
of the manuscript is the old hieratic, cursive writ- 
ing of the Egyptians, not their hieroglyphics, and 
the children used portions of this book as copies, 
listened to dictation from it and learned to write 
the language by imitating it. Of books similar to 
it we have a number of manuscript copies. Some 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 9 

of these copies preserved from -before 2000 B.C. 
are full of errors such as school children would 
make in taking down dictation. This was their 
method of teaching spelhng, and after the chil- 
dren had spelled the words the teacher went over 
them and corrected the mistakes. These correc- 
tions were made in a different colored ink from 
that used by the pupils! The whole system of 
teaching, as it thus comes before us, resembles 
our own elementary school teaching much more 
than we might think possible. Spelling, writing, 
composition are all taught in this way yet, or at 
least they were when I was at school, and while 
I have heard that some of the old-fashioned 
methods were going out, I have also received some 
hints of the reaction by which they are coming 
in again, so that the Egyptian methods take on a 
new interest. 

Perhaps there is no more interesting feature of 
the education of that olden time than the fact 
that these books which were used as copybooks in 
the school contain moral lessons. We have been 
neglecting these in our schools and have come to 
recognize the danger of such neglect. Definite 
efforts at the organization of moral teaching in 
some form are being made by many teachers, and 
their necessity is recognized by all educators. 
All of these old Egyptian books, then, will have 
a special claim on our interest at the present 
time. Above all, the oldest ofithem, though it 
is literally the oldest book in the world, merits 



10 EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 

our attention, because its moral teaching is very- 
clear-cut and its emphasis on ethical precepts very 
pronounced. 

We would be very prone to think that what an 
old father has to say to his boy over fifty cen- 
turies ago would have, at most, only an anti- 
quarian interest for us. It is not easy even to 
imagine that the old gentleman could have known 
human nature so well and written from so close 
to the heart of humanity because of his love for 
his boy, that his words would always have a prac- 
tical application in life. Such, however, is actu- 
ally the case. Any father of the modern time 
would be proud to be able to give to his boy the 
eminently practical maxims that this old father 
has written down. If there is any advice that 
will be helpful for youth, for the young usually 
demand that they shall have their own experi- 
ence and not take it at second hand, this is the 
advice that is of value. Only fools, it is said, learn 
by their own experience, but then there is good 
Scripture warrant for believing that they were not 
all wise men in the olden time, and we are pretty 
well agreed that all the fools are not dead yet. 
If advice can be of service, however, from one 
generation to another, then here is the wisdom 
of age for the inexperience of youth. At least 
it will serve after the event to show youth that it 
was properly warned and that it is entirely its 
own fault if it has been making a fool of itself — 
as other generations have done before. 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW H 

It might be expected that at least in form these 
old-time maxims would be rude and crude, ex- 
pressed with an old man's loquaciousness and 
with many personal foibles. Fortunately for us, 
while to his son Ptah Hotep was very probably 
an old man, he was not what most of us would call 
old. In Egypt they married comparatively young. 
This boy was probably the oldest son. It is usu- 
ally for the oldest that such advice is treasured 
up and written out. The father then, giving his 
advice just as his son was leaving the internal 
household when he had married a wife and was 
about to set up a home of his own, was probably 
not more than forty. To seventeen or eighteen, 
forty is quite ancient. To most of the rest of us 
it is entirely too young to be trusted absolutely in 
serious matters. Aristotle declared that a man's 
body reaches physical perfection at thirty-five 
and his mind reaches intellectual maturity at 
forty-nine. His students were inclined to think 
that this age was entirely too old, his philosophic 
contemporaries of his own generation and the 
members of national academies and learned so- 
cieties of most of the generations since, have been 
quite sure that the term set was entirely too 
young. 

Ptah Hotep's son, then, very probably looked 
on his father as most sons under twenty are prone 
to do, as a dear old-fashioned gentleman (he does 
not like to use the word old fogy for his father, 
reserving it for the fathers of others), who would 



12 EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 

be quite tolerable if he only had a little more 
sympathy with the wonderful advance that is in 
the world in this new generation. The real young 
man of the time, however, was the father who 
wrote his maxims, the condensed wisdom of his 
experience of life, with a directness, an absolute 
clarity, an occasional appeal to figures of speech 
and a variety of expression so striking as to make 
his work literature. As such it has come down 
to us. It is eminently human in every way, and 
while there is here and there an unfortunate 
tendency to repeat words of similar sound and 
different meaning, after the fashion of what we 
call punning, this is pardonable enough since so 
many of our friends indulge in it and give us 
practice in pardoning, while, on the whole, the old 
man wrote as wisely as Polonius, and in a style 
not quite as artificial as that which Shakespeare 
has invented as suitable to the old Danish Prime 
Minister, whom the ancient vizier of Egypt recalls 
so vividly in many ways. 

No idea is probably more ingrained in modern 
thinking, no 02:)inion is more generally accepted, 
no conclusion is surer to most people, than that 
we are in the midst of marvellous progress in this 
little world of ours, and that our generation is 
somewhere at the apex of the Pyramid of Prog- 
ress, elevated thereto by the attainments of the 
generations that have preceded us. As the Poet 
Laureate put it at the close of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, " we are the heirs of all the ages in the fore- 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 13 

most files of time " ; and because we liave the ad- 
vantage of our predecessors' progress in their 
time, we are, of course, in all that makes for human - 
happiness and fulness of life, very far ahead of 
those gone before us. The farther back we go in 
history, then, the lower down men are supposed to 
be found in all that stands for intellectuality and 
in all that represents the possibilities of human 
achievement at its l)est. It is now well understood 
that the generations of the past are not so much 
to be blamed for their backwardness as to be 
pitied for the misfortune that, having come earlier 
in the world's history, they could not have the 
advantages that we enjoy, and therefore could 
only attain much lower stages in human progress 
than ours. 

Apparently, there are very few peoj^le who do 
not share in the opinions thus expressed. The 
nineteenth century has been proclaimed the cen- 
tury of evolution; and the idea of evolution has 
become so much a part of the thought of our time 
that man also is assumed to be in the midst of it, 
and history is presumed to show distinctly the 
wonderful advance that humanity has made. As 
a matter of fact, it is extremely difficult to point 
out definitely where progress in humanity may be 
observed. Ambassador Bryce was asked, two 
years ago, to deliver an address before Phi Beta 
Kappa at Harvard, and took for his subject 
"What is Progress?" Phi Beta Kappa is the 
fraternity that admits into its classes only the best 



14 EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 

students, — men who have proved their ability by 
success. Mr. Bryce, speaking to the most intelli- 
gent university graduates, might be expected to 
make much of our wonderful recent progress. 
The address subsequently appeared in the Atlantic 
Monthly for August, 1907. Far from any glori- 
fication of progress, the historian of the American 
Commonwealth, who has demonstrated his breadth 
of view and his notable lack of British insularity 
by the large way he has written about us, so that 
we have adopted his work as a text-book of in- 
formation about ourselves, is very dubious as to 
whether there is any progress in the world. There 
is certainly no progress in man's highest expres- 
sions of his intelligence. As Mr. Bryce says: 
" The poetry of the early Hebrews and of the 
early Greeks has never been surpassed and hardly 
ever equalled. Neither has the philosophy of 
Plato and Aristotle, nor the speeches of Demos- 
thenes and Cicero." No one pretends that there 
is any progress in art. The masterpieces of 
architecture, sculpture, and painting date as a 
rule from long before our time, some of them 
nearly twenty-five hundred years back. 

As has been very well said, the man who talks 
much about progress in our time usually knows 
only the history of human thought in his own 
generation, and not very much about that. In 
nearly every important phase of human achieve- 
ment, we are, in present accomplishment, far be- 
hind the great predecessors. In our generation, 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 15 

we are confessedly imitators in every phase of 
sesthetic expression. In painting, sculpture, art 
and literature, our models are all in the past, and 
we are quite frank in confessing that we are doing 
no work at all so good as the work of our fore- 
fathers of many generations and sometimes many 
centuries ago. Whence, then, comes the idea of 
progress? It has obtained most of its vogue from 
the theory of evolution; and the lack of evidence 
for evolution in general, in spite of the persua- 
sion on the part of many educated people that 
there are proofs for it, can be very well judged 
from the corresponding lack of evidence with re- 
gard to progress in humanity. There is com- 
plete absence of proof for this latter, when the 
situation with regard to human achievement in the 
really great things of human life is examined. 
Indeed, it would be amusing were it not amaz- 
ing to think how readily we have come to accept 
notions for which there is so little substantiation. 
To many this will doubtless seem a surprising 
declaration to make, after all that has been writ- 
ten, and universally accepted as most people think, 
with regard to evolution by the great minds of the 
nineteenth centurj^ What evolution means, how- 
ever, is summed up in the theory of descent, that 
is that living things as we know them now, have 
all come from simpler forms and perhaps all from 
a single form. The only other phase of interest 
in evolution is what concerns the theory of natu- 
ral selection, which is supposed by many people to 



16 EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 

have been demonstrated in the nineteenth cen- 
tury. It may be well for those who think thus to 
have recalled to them what a recent writer on the 
subject, himself a distinguished investigator in 
biology, a professor at Leland Stanford Univer- 
sity, where under the influence of President Jor- 
dan biology is thoroughly yet conservatively cul- 
tivated, has to say with regard to these theories 
and the objective evidence for them. Professor 
Vernon L. Kellogg in his " Darwinism To-day," * 
p. 18, though himself an evolutionist and a Dar- 
winian, says: "What may for the moment detain 
us, however, is a reference to the curiously almost 
completely subjective character of the evidence 
for both the theory of descent and natural selec- 
tion. Biology has been until now a science of ob- 
servation; it is beginning to be one of observation 
plus experiment. The evidence for its principal 
theories might be expected to be thoroughly ob- 
jective in character; to be of the nature of posi- 
tive, observed and perhaj^s experimentally proved, 
facts. How is it actually? Speaking by and 
large, we only tell the general truth when we de- 
clare that no indubitable cases of species forming 
or transforming , that is of descent, have been ob- 
served; and that no recognized case of natural 
selection really selecting has been observed. I 
hasten to repeat the names of the Ancon sheep, 
the Paraguay cattle, the Porto Santo rabbit, the 
Artemias of Schmankewitch and the de Vriesian 

* Henry Holt and Co., New York, 1907. 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 17 

evening primroses to show that I know my hst 
of classic possible exceptions to this denial of ob- 
served species forming, and to refer to Weldon's 
broad-and-narrow fronted crabs as a case of what 
may be an observation of selection at work. But 
such a list, even if it could be ecvtended to a score, 
or to a hundred, of cases, is ludicrous as objective 
proof of that descent and selection, under whose 
domination the forming of millions of species is 
supposed to have occurred" (Italics mine.) 

Mr. Kellogg, as might be expected from this, 
objects very much to the application that has been 
so heedlessly made of certain supposed principles 
of evolution to pedagogy. In practically every 
science to which Darwinian principles have been 
applied it is the weakest of the principles that have 
been appealed to as the foundation for presumedly 
new developments in the particular science. With 
regard to the so-called science of education Pro- 
fessor Kellogg says: 

" In Pedagogy it is also the theory of descent 
rather than the selection theory which has been 
drawn on for some rather remarkable develop- 
ments in child study and instruction. Unfortu- 
nately it is on that weakest of the three founda- 
tion pillars of descent, namely the science of em- 
bryology with its Miillerian-Haeckelian capit- 
ulation theory or biogenetic law, that the child- 
study pedagogues have builded. The species re- 
capitulates in the ontogeny (development) of each 
of its individuals the course or history of its 



18 EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 

phylogeny (descent or evolution). Hence the 
child corresponds in different periods of its de- 
velopment to the phyletic stages in the descent 
of man. As the child is fortunately well by its 
fish, dog and monkey stages before it comes into 
the care of the pedagogue, he has to concern him- 
self only with safe progress through the various 
stages of prehistoric and barbarous man. Detect 
the precise phyletic stage cave-man, stone-age 
man, hunter and roamer, pastoral man, agricul- 
turalist, and treat with the little barbarian accord- 
ingly! What simplicity! Only one trouble here 
for the pedagogue; the recapitulation theory is 
mostly wrong and what is right in it is mostly 
so covered up by the wrong part, that few bi- 
ologists longer have any confidence in discovering 
the right. What, then, of our generalizing friends, 
the pedagogues?" 

It is in educational matters, above all, then, that 
we must be careful about assumptions with regard 
to evolution and supposed inevitable progress be- 
cause we must, forsooth, be taking advantage of 
the accumulated experience of previous genera- 
tions. There is no inevitability about progress in 
any line. The attainment of any generation de- 
pends absolutely on what that generation tries to 
do, the ideals that it has and the fidelity with which 
it sets itself to work. We can make just as 
egregious mistakes, and we have made them, as 
any generation of the past. We can foster delu- 
sions with regard to our all-knowingness just as 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 19 

many another foolish people before us have done, 
and our one hope of real accomplishment for our- 
selves and our generation is to choose our pur- 
poses carefully and then set about their accom- 
plishment with strenuous effort. The lessons of 
the past in history are extremely precious not only 
because they show us where others made mistakes 
but also because they show us the successes of the 
past. The better we know these, the deeper our 
admiration for them, the better the outlook for 
ourselves and our accomplishment. This is the 
ideal that I would like to emphasize in this 
series of lectures and addresses and in this, far 
from there being any pessimism, there is, as it 
seems to me, the highest optimism. Any genera- 
tion that wants to can do well, but it must want 
to do efficaciously. 

Any one who thinks that education, in the sense 
of training of character or advice with regard 
to practical, every-day life, has evoluted in the 
course of time, should read this little book that 
I bring to you this evening. Indeed, it is as the 
first chapter in the history of education that it 
finds its most valuable place in literature. This 
teacher of the old-time, who had his boy's best 
interest at heart, not only knew what to say but 
how to say it so as to attract a young man's atten- 
tion. Of course it is probable that, even with all 
this good advice, the young man went his way in 
his own fashion; for that is ever the mode of the 
young. But, so far as the experience of another 



20 EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 

could supply for that personal experience which 
every human being craves, and will have, no mat- 
ter what the cost, surely this oldest book in the 
world supplies the best possible material. As 
literature, it has a finish that is quite surprising. 
Art is said to be the elimination of the superfluous. 
Surely, then, this is artful, in the best sense of 
that word, to a supreme degree. It is surprising 
how few repetitions there are, how few tergiversa- 
tions, how few unnecessary words; and yet the 
style is not so austere as to be dry and lacking in 
human interest. 

Probably the most interesting feature of the 
book is the fact that in it God is always spoken 
of in the singular. It is not the " gods " who 
help men, who punish them, who command and 
must be obeyed, whose providence is so wonderful, 
but it is always " God." The latest editor,* Mr. 
Battiscombe G. Gunn, in his version always in- 
serts the definite article before the word God 
because, he says, in different places there were 
different local gods, and the idea of the writer was 
to emphasize the fact that the god of any par- 
ticular locality would act as he declared in his in- 
structions. There are many distinguished Efgyp- 
tologists, however, who insist that the expression 
" the God," which occurs not onl}^ in this but in 
many other very early Egyptian writings, is a 

* " The Instructions of Ptah Hotep." Translated from the 
Egyptian, with an Introduction and an Appendix, by Battiscombe G, 
Gunn. E. P. Button & Co. Wisdom of the East Series, 1909. 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 21 

monotheistic deity whose name is above all names, 
and transcends all the power of humanity to name 
him, and hence is spoken of always without a 
name but with the definite article. 

It is curious indeed to find that the verj'^ first 
bit of instruction given to his son by this wise 
father is, not to be conceited about what he knows. 
How striking the expression of his first sentence 
of this oldest book: " Be not proud because thou 
art learned." And the second is like unto the 
first : "But discourse with the ignorant man as 
with the sage." And then at the end of this very 
first paragraph comes the first figure of speech in 
human literature that has been preserved for us. 
It is as beautiful in its simplicity and illuminating 
quality as any of the subsequent time. " Fair 
speech" (by which is meant evidently kindly 
speech toward those who know less than we do) 
"is more rare than the emerald that is found by 
slave maidens on the pebbles." Then there comes 
a series of directions as to how the young man 
should treat his superiors, his equals and his in- 
feriors. If in argument he is worsted by some 
one who knows more than himself, he is cautioned, 
" Be not angry." If some one talks nonsense, 
" Correct him." If an ignorant man insists on 
arguing, " Be not scornful with him, but let 
him alone ; then shall he confound himself " ; for 
"it is shameful to confuse a mean mind." 

The advice may be summed up. Do not argue 
with your superiors, it does no good; nor with 



22 EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 

your equals, state your case and let it go; but 
above all, not with your inferiors; let them talk 
and they will make fools of themselves. 

Kindness is always insisted on as the quality 
most indispensable to a man. "Live therefore," 
says the father, " in the house of kindhness, and 
men shall come and give gifts of themselves." 
There are lessons in politeness as well as in kind- 
liness. For instance: " If thou be among the 
guests of a great man, pierce him not with many 
glances. It is abhorred of the soul to stare at him. 
Speak not till he address thee. Speak when he 
questioneth thee; so shalt thou be good in his 
opinion." Again, he wants his son not to eat the 
bread of idleness: "Fill not thy mouth at thy 
neighbor's table." He insists much on the lesson 
that God helps those who help themselves. " Be- 
hold," he'says, " riches come not of themselves. It 
is their rule to come to him that actively desires. 
If he bestir him and collect them himself, God 
shall make him prosperous; but He shall punish 
him if he be slothful." On the other hand, the 
gaining of riches for riches' sake is not worth the 
while. " When riches are gained, follow the heart; 
for riches are of no avail if one be weary." As 
much as to say, after having gained a competency, 
do not spend further time in amassing wealth, but 
enjoy in a reasonable way that which has been 
obtained. 

There are certain things, however, that a man 
should not follow; they are unworthy of his na- 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 23 

ture as a man. " As to the man whose heart 
obeyeth his belly, he causeth disgust in place of 
love. His heart is wretched, his body is gross. He 
is insolent toward those endowed by God. He 
that obeyeth his belly hath an enemy." While 
the old man warns his son against gluttony and 
against sloth, he has much to say with regard to 
covetousness : "If thou desire that thine actions 
may be good, save thyself from all malice, and 
beware of the quality of covetousness, which is a 
grievous inner malady." This expression is ren- 
dered still more striking by what is added to it; 
for the father insists that it is particularly rela- 
tives-in-law who quarrel over money. " Covetous- 
ness setteth at variance fathers-in-law and the 
kinsmen of the daughter-in-law\ It sundereth the 
wife and the husband; it gathereth unto itself all 
evils. It is the girdle of all wickedness." It 
needed only the next sentence to make these ex- 
pressions supremely modern: " Be not covetous as 
touching shares, in seizing that which is not thine 
own property." 

The God of this earliest book that we have 
from the hand of man has nearly all the inter- 
esting and important qualities that we refer to the 
Deity. He is looked up to as the giver of all good 
things. He loves his creation, and above all loves 
man, and observes men's actions very carefully, 
and rew^ards or punishes them according to their 
deserts. He desires men to be fruitful, and to 
multiply upon the earth for their own good and 



24 EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 

for his glory. Nothing unworthy of the Deity, as 
he is known by the most educated people, is at- 
tributed to this God, who transcends a personal 
name. There is an utter disregard of all trivial 
mythology and of all mysterious riddles, though 
these trimmings of truth are to be found con- 
stantly in other Egyptian works of later date. 
Indeed, the picture of God is as striking a pres- 
entation of the fatherliness and the providence of 
the Almighty and of most of the lovable char- 
acteristis of the Deity as there is to be found any- 
where in literature until the coming of the 
Saviour. 

One might think that after having warned his 
son about most of the Seven Deadly Sins as we 
know them — pride, covetousness, gluttony, envy, 
sloth and anger,— at least we should not find lust 
touched on in the modern way. There is, how- 
ever, in this matter an extremely chaste bit of 
advice that sums up the whole situation as well as 
a father can tell his son. The writer says : " No 
place prosj^ereth wherein lust is allowed to work 
its way. A thousand men have been ruined for 
the i^leasure of a little time short as a dream. 
Even death is reached thereby. It is a wretched 
thing. As for the lustful liver, every- one 
leaveth him for what he doeth; he is avoided. If 
his desires be not gratified, he regardeth no laws." 

The father tells his son, straightforwardly and 
emphatically, that indulgence in this vice inevi- 
tably leads to loss of friends, of health, of every- 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 25 

thing that the world holds good; and that once a 
man has started down this path he has no regard 
for law or order or decency or self-respect. This 
eighteenth paragraph on a thorny subject is 
probably one of the most wonderful passages in 
this advice of a father to his son. Fathers of the 
modern time ask what shall they say to their 
boys. Here is something to tell them that does not 
excite pruriency, that does set the full state of the 
case before them and represents probably all that 
can be said with assurance and safet}^ 

In recent years we have heard much of moral 
and social prophylaxis and the necessity for giv- 
ing precious information with regard to this sub- 
ject that may prove helpful to young people. 
Most people are sure to think that this is the 
first time in the history of the race that there 
has been an awakening to the necessity for this. 
Of course there is no doubt that owing to de- 
layed marriages and unfortunate social conditions 
in our large cities we have more need of it than 
past generations, yet here in this old schoolbook 
from Egypt we have very definite and very wise 
teaching in the matter. A physician is prone to 
wonder what did the old man mean by " a thou- 
sand men have been ruined for the pleasure of a 
little time short as a dream. lllven death is 
reached thereby."^ Is it possible that he knew 
something of the physical, or let us rather say, the 
pathological dangers of tlie vice? In the discus- 
sion of the pictures of old-time surgery in The 



26 EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 

Journal of the American Medical Association I 
suggested that these generations seem to have 
known more about this phase of pathology than 
we are inchned to admit. 

On the other hand, the father emphatically 
warns his son that his happiness will depend on 
loving his wife and caring for her to the best of 
his ability; though some of the details of that ad- 
vice are so naively modern in their expression that 
it seems almost impossible to believe that they 
should have been sj)oken nearly six thousand years 
ago. He says: " If thou wouldst be wise, provide 
for thine house, and love thy wife. Give her* what 
she wants to eat, get her what she wants to wear 
[literally, fill her stomach, clothe her back]. 
Gladden her heart during thy lifetime, for she 
is an estate profitable unto its lord. Be not 
harsh, for gentleness mastereth her more than 
strength." 

There is a variant translation of this passage 
quoted in Maspero's " The Dawn of Civiliza- 
tion," which brings out even more clearly the ideas 
that seem most modern, and which makes it very 
sure that it is not the translator who has found 
in vague old expressions thoughts that, when put 
into modern words, have modernized old ideas. 
Maspero reads: " If thou art wise, thou wilt go 
up into thine house and love thy wife at home; 
thou wilt give her abundance of food; thou wilt 
clothe her back with garments; all that covers her 
limbs, her perfumes, are the joy of her life. As 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 27 

long as thou lookest to this, she is as a profitable 
field to her lord [master]." 

The old gentleman's idea evidently was that, 
looked at merely from a material standpoint, it 
was worth a man's while to spend as much time 
caring for his wife as for his estate. She meant 
just as much for his happiness in the end and 
might mean probably more for his unhappiness. 
It is a very practical way of looking at the sub- 
ject and perhaps the romancists might think it 
sordid. It must not be forgotten, however, that 
this is only the secondary motive suggested. At 
the beginning he (Commands him to love his wife 
for her own sake, and then, after suggesting the 
material benefit that comes from caring for her, 
he says that " gentleness mastereth her more than 
strength." 

Immediately after this valuable advice with re- 
gard to the care of the principal member of his 
household the old man turns to the question of 
the care of his servants. We are surely prone to 
think that the servant problem at least is a new 
development in this little world of ours. Many 
literary works serve to foster the impression that 
in the old days servants were easy to obtain, that 
they were always respectful, that they could read- 
ily be managed and life with them was, if not one 
sweet song, at least a very smooth course. Men, 
however, have always been men, and women and 
even servants have always had minds of their own, 
and strange as it may seem to us there has always 



28 EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 

been a servant problem and there was one in 
Egypt 5,500 years ago. 

Ptah Hotep said: " Satisfy thine hired servants 
out of such things as thou hast; it is the duty of 
one that hath been favored of God. In sooth, it 
is hard to satisfy hired servants. For one saith, 
'he is a lavish person ; one knoweth not that 
which may come from him.' But on the morrow 
he thinketh, ' he is a person of exactitude ( parsi- 
mony), content therein.' And when favors have 
been shown unto servants, they say ' we go.' 
(Italics mine.) Peace dwelleth not in that town 
wherein dwell servants that are wretched." 

A difficult problem; presents will not solve it 
but only complicate it, exact justice is necessary, 
but the peace that follows is worth the trouble 
it entails. The principle would be valuable in 
many a squabble of corporate employer and hosts 
of servants in the modern time. 

For domestic hapi^iness, it needed only the 
advice given a little later in this instruction: " Let 
thy face be bright what time thou livest. Bread 
is to be shared. He that is grasping in enter- 
tainment himself shall have an empty belly. He 
that causeth strife cometh himself to sorrow. 
Take not such a one for thy companion. It is 
a man's kindly acts that are remembered of him 
in the years after his life." 

There is one phase of life in which Ptah Hotep 
differs entirely from the present generation, — at 
least if we are to judge the present generation 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 29 

from its results in this matter. Of course there 
are many of us who consider that, in spite of six 
thousand years of distance in time, the old Egyp- 
tian prime minister is far ahead of our contem- 
poraries in this important subject. He thought 
that obedience was the most important thing in 
life. For him independence of spirit, in a young 
person particularly, was an abomination. In spite 
of the tendency to loquacity and to repeat itself, 
often said to be so characteristic of old age, the 
father, who in all his instructions has never sinned 
against this literary canon, almost seems to do 
so when it comes to the question of obedience. 
Over and over again he insists that obedience is the 
one quality that must characterize a man if he is 
to get on in life, and if he is to secure happiness, 
and have a happy generation of his own group 
around him. The sentences read more like a 
Kempis or some mediaeval writer on spirituality, 
and seem meant for monks under obedience rather 
than for a J'oung man of the world, the son of a 
prime minister, just about to enter on his life 
work in business and politics. Two of the para- 
graphs are well worth quoting here: 

" A splendid thing is the obedience of an obedi- 
ent son; he cometh in and listeneth obediently. 
Excellent in hearing, excellent in speaking, is 
every man that obeyeth what is noble. The 
obedience of an obeyer is a noble thing. Obedi- 
ence is better than all things that are; it maketh 
good will. How good it is that a son should take 



30 EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 

that from his father by which he hath reached 
old age [obedience] ! That which is desired by the 
God is obedience; disobedience is abhorred of the 
God. Verily, it is the heart that maketh its mas- 
ter to obey or to disobey; for the safe-and-sound 
life of a man is his heart. It is the obedient man 
that obeyeth what is said; he that loveth to obey, 
the same shall carry out commands. He that 
obeyeth becometh one obeyed. It is good indeed 
when a son obeyeth his father; and he (his father) 
that hath spoken hath great joy of it. Such a 
son shall be mild as a master, and he that heareth 
him shall obey him that hath spoken. He shall be 
comely in body and honored by his father. His 
memory shall be in the mouths of the living, those 
upon earth, as long as they exist. 

" As for the fool, devoid of obedience, he 
doeth nothing. Knowledge he regardeth as igno- 
rance, profitable things as hurtful things. He 
doeth all kind of errors, so that he is rebuked 
therefor every day. He liveth in death therewith. 
It is his food. At chattering speech he marvelleth, 
as at the wisdom of princes, living in death every 
day. He is shunned because of his misfortunes, 
by reason of the multitude of afflictions that 
Cometh upon him every day." 

Of one thing the old prime minister was espe- 
cially sure. It was that employment at no single 
occupation, no matter what it was or how inter- 
esting soever it might be, could satisfy a man 
or even keep him in good health. He felt, prob- 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 31 

ably by experience, the necessity for diversity of 
mind and of occupation, if there was to be any 
happiness or any real success in life. He has a 
quiet way of putting it, but he says, as confi- 
dently as the most modern of pedagogues, that 
all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and 
all play and no work makes it impossible for 
Jack to get on. But a proper mixture of both 
makes life livable; and if a man has only the 
work that he cares for, and can get some of 'his 
pleasure in life out of his work, then is all well. 
" One that reckoneth accounts all the day passeth 
not an happy moment. One that gladdeneth his 
heart all the day provideth not for his house. 
The bowman hitteth the mark, as the steersman 
reacheth land, by diversity of aim. He that 
obeyeth his heart shall command." 

There are some conclusions in the philosophy 
of life that we are very much inclined to think 
are the products of modern practical wisdom, and 
it is rather surprising to find them stated j^lainly 
in this old-time advice of the father to his boy. 
If there is one idea more than another that we 
are confident is modern, and are almost sure to 
attribute to the social development of our own 
generation, it is that riches do not belong to the 
man who makes them to be used for his own pur- 
pose alone, but their possession is justified only 
if he uses them for the benefit of the community. 
This is so up-to-date an idea indeed that it is 
startling to find it expressed in all its complete- 



5^ EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 

ness in this oldest of books. Ptah Hotep said: 
" If thou be great after being of no account, 
and hast gotten riches after poverty, being fore- 
most in these in the city, and hast knowledge con- 
cerning useful matters so that promotion is come 
unto thee, then swathe not thine heart in thine 
hoard, for thou art become the steward of the 
endowments [of God]. Thou art not the last; 
another shall be thine equal, and to him shall come 
the»like [fortune and station]." 

After all this it may be necessary to trace the 
pedigree of the book, since it might seem to be 
possible that it was a modern invention. The 
original of it is the so-called " Prisse Papyrus," 
which is well known by name to all students of 
archfEology and especially of Egyptology, and the 
contents of which are familiar to all who are ac- 
quainted with Egyptian history and literature. It 
appears to have been found at Thebes, but the 
exact place is not known. M. Prisse d' Avenues, 
the well-known French archaeologist after whom 
it is named, is said to have bought it from one 
of the Egyptian native workmen, or fellahin, 
whom he had hired to make excavations in the 
tombs of Thebes. Egyptologists generally have 
accepted the idea that it was actually taken by 
this workman from the tomb of one of the Kings 
Entef, who were of the Eleventh Dynasty and 
reigned about 3000 B.C. This is not certain, how- 
ever. After publishing a translation in 1847, M. 
Prisse presented the precious papyrus to the 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 33 

Bibliotheque Royale (now Nationale). There it 
may still be seen. Spread out flat, it measures 
about twenty-four feet in length and six inches in 
width. There are about eighteen pages of clear 
red and black writing in the Hieratic character. 

The first part of this manuscript is a portion 
of another book, the so-called " Instructions of 
Ke'gemni." * This is, however, only a short frag- 
ment, though probably of even older date than the 
" Instructions of Ptah Hotep." This work we 
have in its entirety. Doubtless its preservation 
was due to the fact that many copies of it had 
been made, though only two have come down 
to us. 

There is a second manuscript of the " In- 
structions of Ptah Hotep," — or the " Proverbs of 
Phtahhotpu," as the book is called by Maspero. 
This was discovered not long ago in the British 
Museum, by Mr. Griffith; and, while it is not so 
complete as the French copy, there is such an 
agreement between the two manuscripts that there 
is no doubt about the authenticity of the book 
and of the fact that it represents the oldest book 
in the world. 

Its date would be about 3650 B.C. if we were 

* These Egj'ptian names are spelled differently by different modern 
scholars, according to their idea of the value of certain sounds of the 
older language as they should be expressed in the modern tongue to 
which they are most familiar. Many English scholars spell this as I" 
have done, Ke'gemni. Maspero, however, and most of the French 
scholars, spell it Qaqimni. Maspero prefers the form Phtah-Hotpu 
to that of Ptah Hotep, which has been adojjted by English scholars. 



34 EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 

to follow, — as does the translator of the most 
easily procurable English edition, Mr. Gunn, — 
the chronology of Flinders Petri e. Recent ad- 
vances in our knowledge of Egyptology, how- 
ever, have brought the dates nearer to us than 
they were placed before. Such men as Breasted 
of Chicago, and Maspero, would probably take 
from three hundred to five hundred years from 
this date. There is a definite tendency in all 
the histories to bring dates much nearer to the 
present than before. For a time, the older one 
could place a date the more scholarly seemed to be 
the appeal of such an opinion. Now the tendency 
is all the other way. Even the latest date that can 
be given for Ptah Hotep, or Phtahhotpu, would 
still make his little book the oldest book in the 
world, however. 

Fortunately for us the manuscripts of the in- 
structions of Ptah Hotep that have come down to 
us are in m'uch better condition than those of most 
of the other instructions of similar kinds formerly 
used in the schools that have been preserved. In 
some of these there are a great many errors of 
writing, spelling and grammar with the correc- 
tions of the master above in a different-colored ink. 
Verily, education has not changed much in spite 
of six millenniums, or very nearly so, of sup- 
posed progress since these were written, for the 
whole process is as familiar as it can be. As Mr. 
Battiscombe Gunn says in his Introduction to 
his edition " a schoolboy's scrawl over 3,000 years 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 35 

old is no easy thing to translate." We would 
seem, however, to have been blessed in the preser- 
vation of this oldest book in the world, either of 
the original copies set by the masters or of such 
copies as were made by advanced students. The 
series of lucky chances that have combined to bring 
to us, in the comparatively perfect form in which 
it exists, this oldest book in the world is interest- 
ing to contemplate. Without them we would have 
no idea of how closely the first people of whom 
we have any definite records in history resembled 
us in every essential quality of humanity, even 
to the ways and modes by which they tried to lift 
humanity out of the barbaric selfishness inherent 
in it to what is higher and nobler in its nature. 

With this surprising resurrection of our school- 
teaching methods from the past it is interesting 
to study other phases of the education of these 
early times, and at the same time to note the 
accomplishments of the men, of the period, their 
tastes, the state of their culture as regards the 
arts and crafts and personal adornment and the 
decoration of their houses and buildings of vari- 
ous kinds. Flinders Petrie, the distinguished 
English Egyptologist, in an article on " The Ro- 
mance of Early Civilization," printed recently in 
The Independent (New York), said: 

" We have now before us a view of the powers 
of man at the earliest point to which we can trace 
WTitten history, and what strikes us most is how 
very little his nature or abilities have changed in 



36 EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 

seven thousand years; what he admired we ad- 
mire; what were his hmits in fine handiwork are 
also ours. We may have a wider outlook, a 
greater understanding of things, our interests may 
have extended in this interval ; but as far as human 
nature and tastes go, man is essentially unchanged 
in this interval." 

We have enough of the products of the arts and 
crafts of these early Egyptian generations to show 
us that there must have been no inconsiderable 
training of the men of this time in the making 
of beautiful art objects. For instance, the in- 
terior decoration of their tombs shows us men 
skilled as designers, clever in the use of colors, 
with a rather extensive knowledge of pigments 
and with a definite tendency not to repeat de- 
signs but to create new ones. Most of the diap- 
ered designs of modern interior decorations were 
original with the Egyptians, and some of those 
found in the tombs uncovered in recent years have 
been adopted and adapted by modern designers. 
It is in the matter of jewelry particularly that the 
ability and the training of the old Egyptian work- 
men are most evident. It would be quite incredible 
to think that these worlonen developed their artis- 
tic craftsmanship without training, and therefore 
there was at least the germ of a technical school 
or set of schools in oldest Egj^pt. It would be 
quite impossible to believe this only that we know 
so much more about other features of Egyptian 
education as anticipations of our own. A spe- 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 37 

cial word about their jewelry then, because it il- 
lustrates a definite training quite different from 
that of our time, will not be out of place. 

Their jewelry, it may be said at once, is in 
striking contrast with what we call jewelry in our 
time. It is true that we are in the midst of one 
of the worst periods of jewelry-making, but then 
we are so prone to think of anything very modern 
as representing the highest evolution, that the con- 
trast is chastening and illuminating. Mr. Petrie 
has insisted on the beautiful jewelry, carved pre- 
cious stones and gold ornaments of the very early 
period in Egypt. In our time we have no jewelry 
that deserves the name. I doubt whether we even 
know the real definition of jewelry, so I venture 
to repeat it. Jewels are precious stones them- 
selves of value, usually of a high degree of hard- 
ness so that they do not deteriorate with time or 
wear, to which a greatly enhanced value is added 
by the handiwork of man. Jewels are made by 
artistic carving and cutting so that besides their 
precious quality as beautiful colored stones, they 
have an added charm and interest from human 
workmanship. We wear no such jewelry in our 
generation. What we have are merely precious 
stones. These by an artificial rigging of the mar- 
ket and a combination of the great commercial 
agencies that control the sale of diamonds and 
other precious stones, remain very expensive in 
spite of their comparative abundance. They are 
worn only because they are a display of the 



38 EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 

amount of money that a person can afford to 
spend for mere ornaments. 

There is nothing in these precious stones them- 
selves that carries an appeal to the educated 
mind. It is true that they are pretty, but only 
with the prettiness of the play of rainbow colors 
that delights a childish or uncultured eye. It re- 
quires no taste to like them, no culture to appre- 
ciate them, and their cost alone gives them value. 
This is so true that those who possess a magnifi- 
cent parure of diamonds often also have an imita- 
tion of them in cheaper stones that may be worn 
on most occasions. The danger of loss or the 
risk of robbery is so great that it has seemed 
worth while to have this imitation made in many 
cases. No one except an expert will recognize the 
difference, and if you are known to possess the 
real stones it will of course be supposed that you 
are wearing them. What gives them value as an 
adornment in the eye of the possessor, and pre- 
sumably also of the onlookers, is the fact that they 
must have cost such a large sum of money. They 
are a vulgar display of wealth. They are typic- 
ally barbaric and, worn in the profusion now so 
common, carry us back to the uncultured peoples 
who like to wear gaudy things. The taste is 
perhaps a little better, but the essential quality of 
mind that dictates the wearing of heavy brass rings 
and strings of beads and that which impels to the 
display of many diamonds, is hard to differentiate. 

Artistic objects produce a sense of pleasure in 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 39 

the beholder, an appreciation of the beautiful 
handiwork of man. Precious stones worn as is 
now the custom produce only a sense of envy. Of 
course envy comes only to baser minds, but it is 
perfectly clear that most of those ^vho are sup- 
posed to be affected by the sight of diamonds worn 
in profusion have this particular quality rather 
well developed. This distinction is often for- 
gotten. Personal adornment as well as the adorn- 
ment of one's house should be in order to give 
pleasure to others, and not merely a display of 
wealth for wealth's sake in such a way as is likely 
to produce envy. The old Egyptians made their 
jewelry with the true artistic sense. Flinders 
Petrie has told how beautifully they carved hard 
gems of various kinds and how the remains of 
these show us a people of good taste, even though 
their technique in the manufacture of such ob- 
jects may have left something to be desired. In 
connection with this oldest of books it is im- 
portant to recall this, for it shows that not alone 
in the applied wisdom of life and the knowledge 
gained from personal experience were these Egyp- 
tians of over 5,000 years ago brothers and sisters 
beyond whose wise saws we have not advanced, 
but also in the realm of art their work takes its 
place beside what is best in the modern time. 

Some may be inclined to say that while the 
Egyptians may, as indeed we must admit they 
did, know many things about art and literature 
and practical wisdom, yet thej^ did not have exact 



40 EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 

knowledge. Their knowledge, though large and 
liberal, had not become scientific. This will 
scarcely be maintained, however, by any one who 
realizes how much of applied science there was 
in the building of the old .temples and pyramids 
and how much they must have developed mechan- 
ics, applied and theoretic, in order to accomplish 
the tasks they thus set theniselves. Cantor, the 
German historian of mathematics, acknowledged 
this and paid a worthy tribute to the old Egyp- 
tians' development of mathematics, pure and 
applied, in discussing the expression that had been 
used by Democritus, the early Greek geometer, 
who once declared that " In the construction of 
plane figures with demonstrations no one has yet 
surpassed me, not even the rope fasteners (har- 
pedonaptai) of Egypt." For a long time this 
word harpedonaptai was a mystery, but Professor 
Cantor cleared it up, and explaining for us the 
exact meaning of the compound which means 
literally either rope fasteners or rope stretchers, 
he says, " There is no doubt that the Egyptians 
were very careful about the exact orientations of 
their temples and other public buildings. Old in- 
scriptions seem to show that only the North 
and South lines were drawn by actual observa- 
tion of the stars. The East and West lines were 
drawn at right angles to the others. Now it ap- 
pears from the practice of Heron of Alexandria 
and of the ancient Indian and probabl}" also the 
Chinese geometers, that a common method of 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 41 

securing a right angle between two very long 
lines was to stretch round three pegs a rope 
measured in three portions which were to one an- 
other in the ratio 3:4:5. The triangle thus 
formed is right-angled. Further the operation of 
rope stretching is mentioned in Egjq^t, without 
explanation, at an extremely early time (Ame- 
nemhat I). If this be the correct explanation of 
it, then the Egyptians were acquainted 2,000 years 
B.C., with a particular ease of the proposition now 
known as the Pythagorean theorem." 

This may not seem to mean very much. Yet 
what it illustrates is just this. These men wanted 
a certain development of mathematics. They 
needed it for the work that they were engaged at. 
They set themselves to the solution of certain 
problems and in doing so evolved a theorem in 
pure mathematics and an application of it which 
greatly simplified construction and gave an im- 
petus to mechanics. In so doing they anticipated 
the work of a long after time. This is what I 
would insist is alwaj^s true with regard to man. 
When he needs some intellectual development he 
makes it. When he requires an application of it 
he succeeds in working it out. Later ages may 
go farther, but had he needed further develop- 
ments he evidently had the power to make them 
and probably would have made them. 

The old Greeks had a much better opportunity 
to study Egyptian remains than we have, and 
especially was this true after the foundation of 



4^ EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 

Alexandria. There must have been a Hvely inter- 
est in things Egyptian aroused in the Greek 
minds by this Greek settlement in old Egypt. It 
is not surprising, then, to find some magnificent 
compliments to the old Egyptians in the mouths 
of some of the writers about the time of the 
foundation of Alexandria. Eudemus, for in- 
stance, the pupil of Aristotle, wrote the history 
of Geometry in which he traces its invention to 
the Egyptians, and states that the reason for 
its invention was its necessity in the remeasure- 
ment of land demanded after the removal of land- 
marks by the annual rise of the Nile. Always 
does one find this, that when there is a serious 
demand for an invention in theory or practice 
men make it. It is not a change or development 
in man that brings about inventions, but a change 
in his environment which causes new necessities to 
arise, and then he - proceeds with an ability al- 
ways the same to respond properly to those neces- 
sities. 

Eudemus says: " Geometry is said by many to 
have been invented among the Egyptians, its 
origin being due to the measurement of plots of 
land. This was necessary there because of the 
rising of the Nile, which obliterated the bound- 
aries appertaining to separate owners. Nor is it 
marvellous that the discovery of this and other 
sciences should have arisen from such an occa- 
sion, since everything which moves in develop- 
ment will advance from the imperfect to the per- 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 43 

feet. From mere sense-perception to calcula- 
tion, and from this to reasoning, is a natural 
transition." 

The old Egyptians made some fine develop- 
ments of arithmetic. These were afterwards lost 
and were reinvented probably several times. I 
have already quoted from Cantor the opinion that 
the Egyptians were familiar with the properties 
of the right triangle whose sides were in the ratio 
3:4:5 over 4,000 years ago. In the Papyrus of 
Ahmes, whose contents probably come from before 
2400 B.C., there are the solutions of many prob- 
lems which show how far the Egyptians had gone 
in arithmetical calculations. For instance, there 
are methods of calculating the solid contents of 
barns. The solutions are not absolute but are 
very closely approximate. Alimes has problems 
that were solved in connection with the pyramids, 
which make it very clear that the old Egyptians 
had more than a little knowledge of the principles 
of proportion, of certain geometrical figures and 
probably were familiar also with the simpler 
phases at least of trigonometry. The area of a 
circle is found in Ahmes by deducting from the 
diameter one-ninth and squaring the remainder, 
which gives a value for the ratio of the circum- 
ference to the diameter of a circle much more 
nearly correct than that used by most writers 
until comparatively recent times. 

As a teacher of the history of medicine with 
certain administrative functions in a medical 



44? EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 

school, I have been very much interested in the 
old-time medicine and above all the details of 
medical education that we find among the Egyp- 
tians. Ordinarily it would be assumed that there 
was so little of anything like medical education 
that it could be scarcely worth while talking about 
it. On the contrary, we find so much that is 
being constantly added to by discoverers, that it 
is a never-ending source of surprise. There is 
a well-grounded tradition founded on inscrip- 
tions that Athothis, the son of Menes, one of the 
early kings, wrote a work on anatomy. This king 
is said to have died about 4150 B.C. There are 
traces of the existence of hospitals at that time 
in which diseases were studied and medical at- 
tendants trained. Even earlier than this there 
was a great physician, the first physician of whom 
we have record in history, whose name was I-Em- 
Hetep, which means " the Bringer of Peace." 
He had two other titles, one of which was " the 
Master of Secrets," partly because he possessed 
the secrets of health and disease, very probably 
also because so many things had to be confided 
to him as a physician. Another of his titles was 
that of " The Scribe of Numbers," in reference, 
doubtless, to the fact that he had to use numbers 
so carefully in making out his prescriptions. 

His first title, that of the bringer of peace, 
shows that very early in the history of medicine 
it was recognized that the physician's first duty 
was to bring peace of mind to his patients. A 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 45 

distinguished French physician (Director) of the 
department of physiology of the University of 
Paris, Professor Richet, said not long since, that 
physicians can seldom cure, they can often relieve, 
but they can always console, and evidently this 
oldest physician took his duty of consolation seri- 
ously and successfully. He lived in the reign 
of King Tchser, a monarch of the Third Dynasty 
in Egypt, who reigned about 4500 B.C. or a little 
later. How much this first physician was thought 
of will be best appreciated from the fact that the 
well-known step pyramid at Sakkara, the old 
cemetery near Memphis, is called by his name. So 
great indeed was the honor paid to him that after 
his death he was worshipped as a god, and so we 
have statues of him seated with a scroll on his 
knees, with an air of benignant knowledge, a 
placid-looking man with a certain divine expres- 
sion of sympathy well suited to his name, the 
bringer of peace. While they raised him to their 
altars he does not wear a beard as did all their 
gods and their kings when they were raised to the 
godly dignity, but evidently they felt that his 
humanity was of supreme interest to them. 

There is another monument at Sakkara that is 
of special interest to us in its consideration of 
old-time medicine. I discussed it and its inscrip- 
tions in the Journal of the American Medical 
Association (Nov. 8, 1907). It is the tomb of 
a surgeon, decorated within with pictures of surgi- 
cal operations. The grandeur of the tomb and its 



46 EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 

location show us that the surgeon must have held 
a very prominent place in the community of that 
time. The date of this tomb is not later than 
2500 B.C. Certain of the surgical operations re- 
sembled those done at the present time. There is 
the opening of a carbuncle at the back of the neck 
which shows how old are men's diseases and the 
modes of their treatment. After this the oldest 
monument in the history of medicine is docu- 
mentary, the Ebers Papyrus, the writing of 
which is probably not much later than 1700 B.C. 
This consists, moreover, of a collection of older 
texts and suggestions in medicine, and some of 
the idioms are said to belong to several distant 
periods. It is probable that certain portions of 
this papyrus were composed not much later than 
the oldest book in the world, and that they date 
from nearly 3000 B.C. This papyrus is as interest- 
ing and as startling in its anticipation of some of 
our modern medical wisdom as is the Instruction 
of Ptah Hotep in the practical wisdom of life. 
This seems a good deal to say, but there is ample 
evidence for it. 

According to Dr. Carl von Klein, who discussed 
the " Medical Features of the Ebers Papyrus " 
in some detail in the Journal of the American 
Medical Association about five years ago, over 
700 different substances are mentioned as of 
remedial value in this old-time medical work. 
There is scarcely a disease of any important or- 
gan with which we are familiar in the modern 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 47 

time that is not mentioned here. While the sig- 
nificance of diseases of such organs as the spleen, 
the ductless glands, and the appendix was of 
course missed, nearly every other pathological 
condition was either expressly named or at least 
hinted at. The papyrus insists very much on the 
value of history-taking in medicine, and hints 
that the reason why physicians fail to cure is often 
because the}^ have not studied their cases suffi- 
ciently. While the treatment was mainly symp- 
tomatic, it was not more so than is a great deal of 
therapeutics at the present time, even in the regu- 
lar school of medicine. The number and variety 
of their remedies and of their modes of administer- 
ing them is so marvellous, that I prefer to quote 
Dr. von Klein's enumeration of them for you: 

" In this papyrus are mentioned over 700 dif- 
ferent substances from the animal, vegetable and 
mineral kingdoms which act as stimulants, seda- 
tives, motor excitants, motor depressants, nar- 
cotics, hypnotics, analgesics, anodynes, antispas- 
modics, mydriatics, myotics, expectorants, tonics, 
dentifrices, sialogogues, antisialics, refrigerants, 
emetiQS, antiemetics, carminatives, cathartics, pur- 
gatives, astringents, cholagogues, anthelmintics, 
restoratives, haematics, alteratives, antipyretics, 
antiphlogistics, antiperiodics, diuretics, diluents, 
diaphoretics, sudorifics, anhydrotics, emmena- 
gogues, oxytocics, ecbolics, galactagogues, irri- 
tants, escharotics, caustics, styptics, hemostatics, 
emollients, demulcents, protectives, antizymotics, 



48 EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 

disinfectants, deodorants, parasiticides, antidotes 
and antagonists." 

Scarcely less interesting than the variety of 
remedies were their methods of administration: 

" Medicines are directed to be administered in- 
ternally in the form of decoctions, infusions, in- 
jections, pills, tablets, troches, capsules, powders, 
potions and inhalations; and externally, as lotions, 
ointments, plasters, etc. They are to be eaten, 
drunk, masticated or swallowed, to be taken often 
once only — often for many days — and the time is 
occasionally designated — to be taken mornings, 
evenings or at bedtime. Formulas to disguise 
bad tasting medicaments are also given." We 
have no advantages over the early Egyptians even 
in elegant prescribing. 

The traditions with regard to Egyptian medi- 
cine which came to the Greeks seemed so in- 
credible as we found them in the older historians 
that they used to be joked about. Herodotus 
came in for a good deal of this scoffing. He was 
said to be entirely too credulous and prone to 
exaggerate in order to add interest to his history, 
but every advance in our knowledge in modern 
time has confirmed what Herodotus has to say. 
In the eighteenth century Voltaire said of him, 
" The Father of history, nay, rather the Father of 
lies." That was Voltaire's way. Anything that 
was above him he scoffed at. Homer was a 
wandering minstrel such as you might find in the 
streets of Paris, Dante was a mediaeval barbarian, 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 49 

our own Shakespeare was a dramatic butcher, 
producing his effects by bloodshed and cruelty 
upon the stage. The nineteenth century has re- 
versed Voltaire in every point of this, though 
some still listen to him in other matters. Above 
all, Herodotus has been amply justified by modern 
investigations. Herodotus tells us of the tradi- 
tion of the number of different kinds of medical 
specialists in existence among the Egyptians. 
We are very prone to think that specialism is a 
development of modern medicine. What we know 
of Egypt shows us how old it is and makes it very 
clear that there must have been specialized modes 
of medical education for these many doctors who 
treated only very limited portions of the body and 
no other. 

Herodotus tells us, to quote for you the quaint 
English of one of the old translations: 

" Physicke is so studied and practised with the 
Egyptians that every disease hath his several 
physician, who striveth to excell in healing that 
one disease and not to be expert in curing many. 
Whereof it cometh that every corner of that coun- 
try is full of physicians. Some for the eyes, others 
for the head, many for the teeth, not a few for 
the stomach and the inwards." 

The Ebers PapyiTis shows us that the specialties 
were by no means scantily developed. We have 
traditions of operations upon the nose, of reme- 
dies for the eyes there are many and the diagnosis 
and treatment of eye diseases are rather well 



50 EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 

developed. The filling of teeth seems even to have 
been practised,* and while the traditions in this 
matter are a little dubious, the evidence has been 
accepted by some good authorities. This special- 
ism in Egyptian medicine probably existed long 
before Herodotus, for he seems to speak of it as 
a very old-time institution in his time, and indeed 
Egypt had degenerated so much that it would be 
hard to believe that there was any such develop- 
ment there in his time. In the old temples they 
seem to have used many modes of treatment 
that we are likely to think of as very modern. 
Music for instance was used to soothe the wor- 
ried, amusements of various kinds were employed 
to influence the disturbed mind favorably. In 
many ways some of the old temples resembled 
our modern health resorts. To them many pa- 
tients flocked and were treated and talked about 
their ailments and went back each year for " the 
cure " once more, all the while being more bene- 
fited, as is true also in our own time, by the 
regularity of life, the regulation of diet and the 
mental influence of the place, than by any of the 
di'ugs or even the curative waters. 

In a word, our study of old Egypt and Egyp- 
tian education shows us men doing things just 
about the way that our generation does them and 
succeeding just about as well as we succeed. 
They taught writing, spelling and composition 
as we do and the moral content of their teaching is 
admirable. They had training schools for the arts 

* Burdett : " History of Hospitals." 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 51 

and crafts, their taste is better than ours in many 
things, above all, they trained workmen very 
well, and the remains of their achievements are 
still the subject of our admiration. They solved 
mechanical problems in the building of the pyra- 
mids quite as well as we do. They made enough 
experiments that we would call chemical, to find 
enduring pigments for decorative purposes and 
they succeeded in making tools that enabled them 
to carve stonework beautifully. Even their pro- 
fessional education was not very different from 
our own and its results, particularly in the line 
of specialism, are startling anticipations of the 
most modern phase of medicine. They anticipated 
our interests in psychotherapy and some of them 
were mental healers, and more of them used the 
influence of the mind on the body than our 
physicians have been accustomed to until very 
recent years. Their physicians and surgeons were 
held in the highest veneration, and what we know 
of them shows that the judgment of the old Egyp- 
tians in this matter was very good and better than 
the average appreciation of physicians at the 
present time. 

After all is said no one with any pretence to 
knowledge of the past would claim for a moment 
that we were doing better work in anything than 
men have done at many times in the history of 
culture. Our idea of progress is just one of these 
vague bits of self-sufficiency that each generation 
has had in its own time and that has made it feel 



52 EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 

that somehow what it is accomphshing means much 
in the world's history. It is rather amusing to 
compare the estimate that any generation has of 
itself with the appreciation of it by succeeding 
generations. Especially is this true for genera- 
tions separated by 100 years or more. Generations 
are only made up of men and women, and what 
man or woman is there who has not thought many 
times during life that though his or her work 
might not be estimated very highly by those close 
to it, this was due but to a sad lack of proper ap- 
preciation, since it represented certain qualities that 
well deserved admiration? We are all gifted with 
this precious self-conceit, which is not so bad a 
thing, after all, since it makes us work better than 
if we had a proper but much less exalted appre- 
ciation of our real worth. It is much easier to 
encourage people to do things than to scold or 
criticise them into doing them. We shall not quar- 
rel with our generation, then, for being self -con- 
ceited, — it is made up of human beings, — but we 
shall try and not let a due appreciation of our 
accomplishment be smothered entirely, by this 
self-conceit. 

After all, did not our favorite EfUglish poet of 
the late nineteenth century declare us to be " the 
heirs of all the ages in the foremost files of time," 
and how could it be otherwise than that we should 
be far ahead of the past, not only because the 
evolution of man made him more capable of 
handling difficult problems, but also because we 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 53 

had the advantage of the accumulated wisdom 
such as it was of the past, of the observations 
and the conckisions of our forefathers and, of 
course, we were far ahead of them. This idea, 
however, so widely diffused that it might almost 
be spoken of as universal, has received many jolts 
in recent times, since we have come to try to 
develop the taste and the intellect of our people 
and not merely our material comforts and our 
satisfaction with ourselves. It has been pointed 
out, over and over again, in recent years that, 
of course, there is no such thing as progress in 
literature, that in art we are far behind many 
generations of the past, that in architecture there 
is not a new idea in the world since the sixteenth 
century, that in all these modes of human ex- 
pression we are mere imitators and not originators. 
Our drama is literally and literarily a farce, and 
no drama that any one expects to live has been 
written for more than a century. Our buildings 
are replicas of old-time structures, no matter 
what their purpose, whether it be ecclesiastical, 
or educational, or municipal, or beneficiary. 

Of course from the scientific standpoint this 
is, after all, what we might expect. In all the 
years of history of which we have any record there 
has been no change in the nature of man and no 
modification of his being that would lead us to 
expect from him anything different from what 
had been accomplished by man in the past. There 
is no change in man's structure, in the size of his 



54i EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 

body in any way, in his anatomy or his physiology, 
in his customs, or ways of Hfe, or in his health. 
The healthy still have about the same expectation 
of life, to use the life insurance term, and though 
we have increased the general average duration 
of life this has been at the expense of other pre- 
cious qualities of the race. The healthy live 
longer, but the unhealthy also live longer. The 
weaklings in mind and body whom nature used 
to eliminate early are now a burden that must 
be cared for. In general it may be said, and 
Virchow, the great German pathologist, who was 
one of the world's great living anthrojJologists of 
his time^ — and that but a few years ago — used to 
insist, that man's skeleton and, above all, his skull 
as we can study them in the mummy of the olden 
time, were exactly the same as those that the race 
has now. Man cannot by thinking add a cubit 
to his stature, nor an inch to the circumference 
of his skull. The seventh generation of an aca- 
demic family each member of which has been at 
the university in his time, is not any more likely 
to have special faculties for the intellectual life, 
indeed it is sometimes hinted that he has less of a 
chance than if his parents had been peasants for as 
long as the history of the family can be traced. 
Of course this has no proper bearing on evolu- 
tion from the biological standpoint, for the length 
of time that we have in human history may be 
conceded to be entirely inadequate to produce any 
noticeable changes on man's body or mind, grant- 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 55 

ing that such were in progress. At the most we have 
7,000 years of history and the evolutionists would 
tell us that this is as nothing in the unnumbered 
aeons of evolution. In the popular estimation, 
however, evolution can almost be seen at work 
just as if one could see blades of grass growing 
by watching them closely enough. This impres- 
sion of man's progress supposed to be supported 
by the theory of evolution is entirely unfounded. 
Just as his body is the same and his brain the same 
size, and the relative proportion of brain weight 
to body weight or at least to skull capacity the 
same now as they were 6,000 years ago; and this 
is true for both sexes, so that because women 
have smaller bodies by one-eighth they also have 
smaller skulls, and this, too, occurs among the 
mummies in Egypt quite as in our own time; 
so in what he is able to do with body and mind 
man is unchanged. Something of dexterity, of 
facility, of self-confidence and assurance of re- 
sults is gained from time to time in history, but 
lost as often, because a few generations fail to 
be interested in what interested their immediate 
predecessors immensely. 

It is not surprising, then, that history should 
show us at all times men doing work about like 
that which they did at any other time — provided 
they were deeply interested enough. The wisdom 
of the oldest book in the world, a father's advice 
to his son, is as practical in most ways as Gorgon 
Graham's letters to his boy — and ever so much 



56 EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 

more ethical and true to life. The decorations of 
the old Egyptian tombs, the architecture of their 
temples, their ways and habits of life so far as 
we know them, all proclaim them men and women 
just like ourselves, certainly not separated from 
us by any gulf or even streamlet of evolution. 
What are more interesting than any supposed 
progress in mankind, are the curious ups and downs 
of interest in particular subjects which follow one 
another with almost definite regularity in history 
as we know it. Men become occupied with some 
phase of the expression of life, literature, archi- 
tecture, government, sometimes in two or three of 
these at the same time, and then there comes a 
wonderful period of development. Just when 
this epoch reaches an acme of power of expres- 
sion there come a self-consciousness and a re- 
finement, welcomed at first as new progress, but 
that seem to hamper originality. Then follows 
a period of distinct decadence, but with a develop- 
ment of criticism of what was done in the past, 
with the formulation of certain principles of 
criticism. Just when by this conscious reflection 
it might be expected that man would surely ad- 
vance rapidly, further decay takes place and there 
is a negative phase of power of expression, out of 
which man is lifted by a new generation usually 
neglectful of the immediate past, sometimes indeed 
deprecating it bitterly, thougli this new phase may 
have been awakened by a further past, which gets 
back to nature and to expression for itself. 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 57 

The most interesting feature of history is how 
men have done things, wonderful things that 
subsequent generations are sure to admire and 
continue to admire whenever they have sense and 
training enough, yet forget about them. This is 
true not only for artistic productions but also for 
practical applications in science, for inventions, 
useful discoveries and the like. In surgery, for 
instance, though we have a continuous history 
of medicine, all of our instruments have been re- 
invented at least three or four times. After the 
reinvention we have been surprised to discover 
that previous generations had used these instru- 
ments long before us. Even the Suez Canal 
was undoubtedl}^ open at least once before our 
time. Personally I feel sure that America was 
discovered at least twice before Columbus' time 
and that during several centuries there was con- 
siderable intercourse between Europe and Amer- 
ica. It is extremely important for us then to 
realize these cycles in human progress and not 
to deceive ourselves with the idea that because 
we are doing something that immediately preced- 
mg generations knew nothing of, therefore we are 
doing something that never was done in the world 
before. This is particularly important for us 
now, for in my estimation the eighteenth was one 
of the lowest of centuries in human accomplish- 
ment, and therefore we may easily deceive our- 
selves as to our place in human history in this 
century. 



58 EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 

Reflections of this kind are, it seems to me, 
particularly important for educators, especially in 
the midst of our tendency to accept evolution un- 
thinkingly in this generation. Man's skull has not 
changed, his body has not been modified, his soft 
tissues are the same as they used to be. His brain 
is no different. Why, then, should he not have 
done things in the olden time just about as he 
does them now? We do not think that acquired 
characters are inherited. Oliver Wendell Holmes 
talks of Emerson as the seventh generation of an 
academic family, but there are none of us who 
think that this made it any easier for Emerson to 
acquire an education, or gave him a better de- 
velopment of mind. Those of us who have ex- 
perience in education know that the descendant 
of a family of peasants for centuries or of farm- 
ers for many generations, easily outstrips some 
of the scions of academic families in intellect. It 
is the man that counts and not his descent. 

Just this is true of generations as well as of 
individuals. Whenever men have set themselves 
to doing things they have accomplished about as 
good results at any time in history as at any 
other. We apparently do not benefit by the ac- 
cumulation of the experience of our predecessors. 
At least we can find no trace of that in history. 
For a certain number of enterprising genera- 
tions there is manifest upward progress. Then 
something always happens to disturb the succes- 
sion of ideas, sometimes it is nothing more than 



EDUCATION, HOW OLD THE NEW 59 

an over-refinement that leads to bad taste, and 
decadence takes the place of progress. The ac- 
complishment of any particular generation, then, 
depends not on its place in any real or fancied 
scheme of evolution, but on its own ideals and its 
determined efforts to achieve them. 

There are people who insist that this doctrine 
is pessimistic and discouraging and that, if we do 
not keep before men the consoling feeling that 
they are advancing beyond their forebears, there is 
not the same incentive to work as there would be 
under other circumstances. On the contrary, as 
it seems to me, this other idea that everything 
depends on ourselves and not on our predecessors, 
constitutes the highest form of incentive. We at 
the present time are far below many preceding 
generations in art, literature, architecture, arts and 
crafts and many developments of taste. Here is 
no evolution, but the story of how each genera- 
tion sets itself to work. Why, then, should we 
think that in education, one of the highest of the 
arts, the moulding of the human mind into beauti- 
ful shapes instead of the moulding of more plastic 
material, we should be far ahead of the past and, 
therefore, in a position to find no precious lessons 
in it? The history of education not alone of the 
last three centuries of education, but of at least 
6,000 years of education, is worth while knowing 
and it magnificently exemplifies how old is the 
new in education. 



THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 



" What is it that hath been ? The same thing that shall 
be. What is it that hath been done? The same that shall 
be done." — Ecclesiastes i: 10. 

" To one small people ... it was given to create the 
principle of Progress. That people was the Greek. Ex- 
cept the blind forces of nature, nothing moves in this 
world which is not Greek in its origin." — Maine. 



THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY* 

We are very prone to think that our univer- 
sities represent new developments in the history 
of humanity. We are aware that there were 
great educational institutions in the world at 
many times before the present, and that some of 
them profoundly affected the intellectual life 
of their time; we are likely to think, however, 
that these institutions were very different from 
our modern universities. They were not so well 
organized, they lacked endowments, their depart- 
ments were not co-ordinated, they did not have the 
libraries and, of course, not the laboratory facili- 
ties that our modern universities have, and then, 
above all, they did not devote themselves to that 
one department of knowledge, phj'^sical science, 
in which absolute truth can be reached, and in 
which each advance in knowledge as made can be 
chronicled and set down as a sure basis for future 
work and workers in the same line for all time. 

* The material for this address was gathered for lectures on the 
History of Education at St. Mary's Seminary, Scranton, Pa., and St. 
Joseph's College, Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia. It was largely added 
to for the introductory lecture in a course to the teachers of the 
parochial schools of Philadelphia, March, 1910. Very nearly in its 
present form it was delivered before the Brooklyn Institute of Arts 
and Sciences as the second lecture in the course on " How Old The 
New Is," April, 1910. 

63 



64 THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 

The older institutions of learning were given up to 
speculation, to idealism, to metaphysics, and, of 
course, therefore, their work, as many educated 
people are now prone to look at it, was too 
shadowy to last, too cloudy to serve as a founda- 
tion for any enduring scientific knowledge. I do 
not think that I exaggerate when I make this as 
the statement of the thought of a good many 
people of our time who are at least supposed to 
be educated and who consider that they are rea- 
sonably familiar with the educational institutions 
of the past. . 

It has seemed to me, then, that it would be 
interesting and opportune to trace the origin, the 
development and the accomplishments of the first 
institution of learning that is very similar to our 
own; and to retrace some of the achievements of 
its professors, the circumstances in which they 
were done and the conditions surrounding an an- 
cient school which I think our stud}^ will make 
clear as well deserving of the title of the first 
modern university. This was not the collection of 
schools at Athens, though there is no doubt at 
all that great intellectual and educational work 
was accomplished there, but not in our modern 
university sense. The schools were independent, 
and while the rivalry engendered by this undoubt- 
edly did good so long as genius ruled in the 
schools, it brought about a degeneration into 
sophistry, from here comes the word, and argu- 
mentativeness, once the great master had been dis- 



THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 65 

placed by disciples who were sure that they knew 
their master's mind, and probably thought, as dis- 
ciples always do, that they were going beyond 
their master, but who really occupied themselves 
with curious and trifling tergiversations of mind 
within the narrow circle of ideas laid down by the 
master, — as has nearly always been the case. 

The first modern university was that of Alexan- 
dria. It was quite as much under Greek influ- 
ence as the schools of Athens. There have been 
commentators on the story of Cleopatra, who have 
suggested that her African cast of countenance 
did not prove a deterrent to her success as a 
conqueror of hearts, and who argue from this to 
the fact that it is not physical charm but per- 
sonality that counts in woman's power over men, 
quite forgetting, if they ever knew, that Cleopatra 
was a Greek of the Greeks, a daughter of the 
line of the Ptolemys, probably a direct descendant 
though with the bar sinister of Philip of INIacedon, 
born of a house so watchful over its Greek blood 
and so resentful of any possible admixture of any- 
thing less noble with itself, that for generations 
it had been the custom for brother to marry sis- 
ter, in order that the race of the Ptolemys might 
be perpetuated in absolute purity. Alexandria, 
while a cosmopolitan city in the inhabitants who 
dwelt in it and in the wide diffusion of com- 
mercial interests that centred there as a mart 
for East and West, was absolutely ruled by 
Greeks and represents for many centuries after 



66 THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 

the decline of Athens had come, the brightest 
focus of Greek intellectual life, Greek culture and 
art, Greek letters and education and every phase 
of that Greek influence in aesthetics which has al- 
ways meant so much in the world's history. 

The interesting fact about Alexandria in the 
history of education, is that it was the home of a 
modern university in every sense of that term, 
having particularly the features that many peo- 
ple are prone to think of as representing modern 
evolution in education. The buildings of the 
university were erected practically by a legacy 
left by the great Conqueror himself, Alexander. 
The central point of interest in the university 
was a great library, the nucleus of which was the 
library of Aristotle, tutor of Alexander, which 
had been collected with the help of that great Con- 
queror and was the finest collection of books in 
the world of that time. The main subject of in- 
terest in the university was physical science and 
its sister subject mathematics, which raises mere 
nature-study into the realm of science, and this 
scientific physical education was conducted in 
connection with the great museum or collection 
of objects of interest to scientists that had also 
been made partly by Aristotle himself and partly 
for his loved tutor by the gratitude of Alexander 
during his conquering expeditions in the far East. 
Finally professors were attracted to Alexandria 
by the off^er of a better salary than had ever been 
paid at educational institutions before this, and 



THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 67 

by the additional offer of a palace to live in, sup- 
plied by the ruler of the country. It is no won- 
der, then, that in attendance also, as well as in the 
prestige of its professors, Alexandria resembled 
a modern university. 

It was its devotion to science, however, that 
especially characterized this first great institution 
of learning of which we have definite records. 
This devotion to science went so far that even 
literature was studied from the scientific stand- 
point. Such details as we have of the instruc- 
tion at Alexandria and the books that have come 
down to us, all show men interested in philology, 
in comparative literature, in grammar and com- 
parative grammar, rather than in the idealistic 
modes of knowledge. We have commentaries 
on the great authors, but no great original works 
of genius in literature from the professors of 
Alexandria. The translation of the Septuagint 
version of the Old Testament is a typical example 
of the sort of work that was being done at Alex- 
andria. They collected the documents of the na- 
tions and translated them for purposes of com- 
parative study. It was an education for informa- 
tion rather than for power. The main idea of the 
time and place was to know as much as possible 
about literature, rather than to know what it 
represented in terms of life, and the real meaning 
of both literature and life was obscured in the 
study about and about them. People studied 
books about books rather than the books them- 



68 THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 

selves. There was much writing of books about 
books, and it was nearly always comparatively 
trivial things in the great authors that attracted 
most attention from the many scholiasts, critics, 
editors, commentators, lecturers of the time. 

Personally I could well understand such an 
incident happening at Alexandria as is said to 
have happened at a well-known English ( of course 
not American!) university not long ago. The class 
was construing Shakespeare and one of the stu- 
dents asked the professor what the meaning of a 
particular figure used by the great dramatist 
was. The professor rei^lied that they were there 
to construe Shakespeare's language and not bother 
about his meaning — yet it was a class in literature. 
Literature in recent years as studied at the uni- 
versities has come to be quite as scientific in its 
modes and methods as it was at the University 
of Alexandria. May I also add that it has become 
quite as sterile of results of any importance. There 
is very little real study of literature, practically 
no encouragement of the attempt to draw inspira- 
tion from the great authors, but all devotion to 
the grammar, to the philology, to comparative 
literature as exemplified in the old writers. 

Books were the great essentials at Alexandria. 
This is not surprising seeing that the university 
was founded around a great library, and that this 
library continued to be the greatest in the world 
in its time. Every student who came to Alexan- 
dria bringing a book with him of which there was 



THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 69 

no copy in the library, was required by a decree of 
the authorities to leave a copy behind him. In all 
the university towns of the times — and there were 
many founded in the rising eastern cities of 
Alexander's empire, as it gradually crumbled into 
smaller pieces providing new capitals with less 
power but with quite as much national feeling 
as the capital cities of larger states, libraries be- 
came the fashion and a city's main claim to 
prestige in education and the intellectual life was 
the number of its books. Antioch, Tarsus, Cos, 
Cnidos and Pergamos are examples of this state 
of affairs. Pergamos was so jealous of the pres- 
tige of the Alexandrian Library that it forbade 
the exportation of parchment, an invention of 
Pergamos which received its name from that 
city. Petty jealousies were quite as much the 
rule among educational institutions then as they 
have been at any time since. 

To many people it will seem quite absurd to 
talk of Alexandria as having done serious scien- 
tific work because the methods of science and 
scientific investigation are supposed to have been, 
as thej^ think, discovered by Lord Bacon in the 
seventeenth century. It is curious how many 
educated people, or at least supposedly educated 
people, have this as their basic notion of the his- 
tory of science. Men wandered in the mazes of 
inductive reasoning utterly unable to bring ob- 
servations together in such a wa}" as to discover 
laws, utterly incompetent to note phenomena and 



70 THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 

bring them into relations to one another so as to 
show their scientific bearing, until Queen Eliza- 
beth's Lord Chancellor came to show the way out 
of the labyrinth and leave the precious cord 
through its corridors, by which others may easily 
thread their way into the free air of scientific 
truth. I know nothing that is more absurd than 
this. It is a commonplace among educators, how- 
ever; it is frequently referred to in educational 
addresses as if it were a universally accepted 
proposition, and to dispute it would seem the 
rankest kind of scientific heresy to these narrow 
minds. Fortunately there are two writers, Ma- 
caulay and Huxley, to whom even these people 
are likely to listen, who have expressed them- 
selves with regard to this precious historic super- 
stition that Lord Bacon invented the inductive 
method of reasoning with what my long-worded 
friend would call appropriate opprobrium. 

Macaulay says: " The inductive method has 
been practised ever since the beginning of the 
world by every human being. It is constantly 
practised by the most ignorant clown, by the most 
thoughtless schoolboy, by the very child at the 
breast. That method leads the clown to the con- 
clusion that if he sows barley he shall not reap 
wheat. By that method the schoolboy learns that 
a cloudy day is the best for catching trout. The 
very infant, we imagine, is led by induction to 
expect milk from his mother or nurse, and none 
from his father. Not only is it not true that 



THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 71 

Bacon invented the inductive method; but it is 
not true that he was . the first person who cor- 
rectly analyzed that method and explained its uses. 
Aristotle had long before pointed out the absurd- 
ity of supposing that syllogistic reasoning could 
ever conduct men to the discovery of any new 
principle, had shown that such discoveries must 
be made by induction, and by induction alone, 
and had given the history of the inductive process, 
concisely indeed, but with great perspicuity and 
precision." 

And Huxley quite as emphatically points out: 
" The method of scientific investigation is noth- 
ing but the expression of the necessary mode of 
working of the human mind. It is simply the 
mode b}^ which all phenomena are reasoned 
about^ — rendered precise and exact." 

While the whole trend of education, even that 
of literature, was scientific at Alexandria, the 
principal feature of the teaching was, as we have 
said, concerned with the physical sciences and 
mathematics. It is in mathematics that the great- 
est triumphs were secured. Euclid's " Geometry," 
as we use it at the present time in our colleges 
and universities, was put into form by Euclid 
teaching at the University of Alexandria in the 
early days of the institution. Euclid's setting 
forth of geometry was so perfect that it has re- 
mained for over 2,000 years the model on which 
all text-books of geometry of all the later times 
have been written. There seems no doubt that 



72 THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 

writers on the history of mathematics are quite 
justified in proclaiming EucHd's " Geometry " as 
one of the greatest intellectual works that ever 
came from the hand of man. The first Ptolemy 
was fortunate in having secured this man as the 
founder of the mathematical department of his 
university. His example, the wonderful incentive 
of his work, the absolute perfection of his con- 
clusions, must have proved marvellous emulative 
factors for the students who flocked to Alex- 
andria. 

Commonly mathematicians are said to be im- 
practical geniuses so occupied with mathematical 
ideas that their influence in other waj^s counts 
for little in university life. If we are to believe 
the stories that come to us with regard to Euclid, 
however, and there is every reason to believe them, 
for some of them come from men who are almost 
contemporaries, or from men who had their in- 
formation from contemporaries, Euclid's influence 
in the university must have been for all that is 
best in education. Proclus tells the story of King 
Ptolemy once having asked Euclid, if there was 
any shorter way to obtain a knowledge of geom- 
etry than through the rather difficult avenue of 
Euclid's own text-book, and the great mathema- 
tician replied that there was " no royal road to 
geometry." Stoba^us relates the story of a stu- 
dent w^ho, having learned the first theorem, asked 
" but what shall I make by learning these 
things? " The question is so modern that Euclid's 



THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 73 

answer deserves to be in the memory of all those 
who are interested in education. Kuclid called 
his slave and said, " Give him twopence, since he 
must make something out of everything that he 
does, even the improvement of his mind." 

Probably even more significant than the tradi- 
tion that Euclid did his work at this first modern 
university, and that besides being a mathematician 
he was a man of very practical ideas in education, 
is the fact that he was appreciated by the men of 
his time and that his work was looked up to with 
highest reverence by his contemporaries and im- 
mediate successors as representing great achieve- 
ment. It is not ever thus. Far from resenting 
in any way the magnificent synthesis that he had 
made of many rather vague notions in mathematics 
before his time, his contemporaries united in doing 
him honor. They realized that his teaching 
created a proper scientific habit of mind. Pappus 
says of Apollonius that he spent a long time as 
a pupil of Euclid at Alexandria and it was thus 
that he acquired a thorough scientific habit of 
mind. After Euclid's time the value of his dis- 
coveries as a means of training the mind was 
thoroughly appreciated. The Greek philosophers 
are said to have posted on the doors of their 
schools " Let no one enter here who does not 
know his Euclid." In the midst of the crumbling 
of old-fashioned methods of education in the 
introduction of the elective system, in the modern 
time, many of our best educators have insisted 



74 THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 

that at least this portion of mathematics, Euclid's 
contribution to the science, should be a required 
study, and most educators feel, even when there 
is question of law or medical study, that one of 
the best preparations is to be found in a thorough 
knowledge of Euclid. 

Almost as wonderful as the work of Euclid 
was that of the second great mathematician of the 
Alexandrian school, Archimedes, who not only 
developed pure mathematics but applied mathe- 
matical principles to mechanics and proved be- 
sides to have wonderful mechanical ability and 
inventive genius. It was Archimedes of whom 
Cicero spoke so feelingly in his " Tusculan Dispu- 
tations," when about a century and a quarter after 
Archimedes' death, he succeeded in finding his 
tomb in the old cemetery a± Syracuse during his 
qugestorship there. How curious it is to think 
that after so short a time as 127 years from 
the date of his death Archimedes was absolutely 
forgotten by his fellow- Syracusans, who reso- 
lutely denied that any trace of Archimedes' tomb 
existed. This stranger from Rome knew much 
more of Archimedes than his fellow-citizens a 
scant four generations after his time. Not how 
men advance, but how they forget even great ad- 
vance that has been made, lose sight of it entirely 
at times and only too often have to rediscover it, 
is the most interesting phase of history. Cicero 
says, " Thus one of the noblest cities of Greece 
and one which at one time had been very cele- 



THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 75 

brated for learning, knew nothing of the monu- 
ment of its greatest genius until it was redis- 
covered for them by a native of Arpinum " — 
Cicero's modest designation for himself. 

We have known much more about Archimedes' 
inventions than about his mathematical works. 
The Archimedian screw, a spiral tube for pump- 
ing water, invented by him, is still used in Egypt. 
The old story with regard to his having suc- 
ceeded in making burning mirrors by which he 
was enabled to set the Roman vessels on fire 
during the siege of Syracuse, used to be doubted 
very seriously and, indeed, by many considered 
a quite incredible feat, clearly an historical ex- 
aggeration, until Cuvier and others in the early 
part of the nineteenth century succeeded in mak- 
ing a mirror by which in an experiment in the 
Jardin des Plantes in Paris wood was set on 
fire at a distance of- 140 feet. As the Roman 
vessels were very small, propelled only by oars or 
at least with very small sail capacity, and as their 
means of offence was most crude and they had 
to approach surely within 100 feet of the wall to 
be effective, the old story therefore is probably 
entirely true. The other phase of history accord- 
ing to which Archimedes succeeded in construct- 
ing instruments by which the Roman vessels were 
lifted bodily out of the water, is probably also 
true, and certainly comes with great credibility 
of the man of whom it is told that, after having 
studied the lever, he declared that if he only had 



76 THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 

some place to rest his lever, he could move the 
world. 

The well-known story of his discovery in hydro- 
statics, hy which he was enabled to tell the King 
whether the royal goldsmiths had made his crown 
of solid gold or not, is very well authenticated. 
Archimedes realized the aj)plication of the prin- 
ciple of specific gravity in the solution of such 
problems while he was taking a bath. Quite for- 
getful of his state of nudity he ran through the 
streets, crying " Eureka! Eureka! I have found 
it! I have found it!" There are many other 
significant develojoments of hydrostatics and me- 
chanics, besides specific gravity and the lever, the 
germs of which are at least attributed to Archi- 
medes. He seems to have been one of the world's 
great eminent practical geniuses. That he should 
have been a product of Alexandria and should 
even have been a professor there would be a 
great surprise if we did not know Alexandria as a 
great scientific university. As it is, it is quite easy 
to understand how naturally he finds his place in 
the history of that university and how proud any 
modern university would be to have on the rolls 
of its students and professors a man who not 
only developed pure science but who made a 
series of practical applications that are of great 
value to mankind. Such men our modern uni- 
versities appropriately claim the right to vaunt 
proudly as the products of their training. 

When we analyze something of the work in 



THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 77 

pure mathematics that was accomphshed by Archi- 
medes our estimation of him is greatly enhanced. 
His work " On the Quadrature," that is the find- 
ing of the area of a segment of the parabohi, is 
probably his most significant contribution to 
mathematical knowledge. His proof of the prin- 
cipal theorem in this is obtained by the " method 
of exhaustion," which had been invented by 
Eudoxus but was greatly developed by Archi- 
medes. This method contains in itself the germ 
of that most powerful instrument of mathematical 
analysis in the modern time, the calculus. 

Another very important work was " The Sphere 
and the Cylinder." This was more appreciated 
in his own time, and as a consequence, after his 
death the figure of a sphere inscribed in a cylinder 
was cut on his tomb in commemoration of his 
favorite theorem, that the volume of the sphere 
is two-thirds that of the cylinder and its surface 
is four times fhat of the base of the cylinder. It 
was by searching for this symbol, famous in an- 
tiquity, that Cicero was enabled to find his tomb 
according to the story that I have already related. 

Within the last few years the reputation of 
Archimedes in pure mathematics has been greatly 
enhanced by the discovery by Professor Heiberg 
of a lost work of the great Alexandrian professor 
in Constantinople. Archimedes himself stated in 
a dedication of the work to Eratosthenes the 
method employed in this. He says: "I have 
thought it well to analyze and lay down for you 



78 THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 

in this same book a peculiar method by means of 
which it will be possible for you to derive instruc- 
tion as to how certain mathematical questions may 
be investigated by means of mechanics. And I 
am convinced that this is equally profitable in 
demonstrating a proposition itself, for much that 
was made evident to me through the medium of 
mechanics was later proved by means of geometry, 
because the treatment by the former method had 
not yet been established by way of a demonstra- 
tion. For of course it is easier to establish a 
proof, if one has in this way previously obtained 
a conception of the questions, than for him to seek 
it without such a preliminary notion. . . . In- 
deed, I assume that some one among the investi- 
gators of to-day or in the future, will discover 
by the method here set forth still other proposi- 
tions which have not yet occurred to me." On 
this Professor Smith comments: "Perhaps in all 
the history of mathematics no such prophetic 
truth was ever put into words. It would almost 
seem as if Archimedes must have seen as in a 
vision the methods of Galileo, Cavalieri, Pascal, 
Newton, and many other great makers of the 
mathematics of the Renaissance and the present 
time." 

Many other distinguished professors of mathe- 
matics have, since this declaration of Archimedes 
came under their notice, declared that he must 
have had almost a prophetic vision of certain de- 
velopments of mathematics and especially applied 



THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 79 

mathematics and mechanics and their relation to 
one another, that were only to come in much later 
and indeed comparatively modern times. Un- 
doubtedly Archimedes' works proved the germ of 
magnificent development not only immediately 
after his own time but in the long-after time of 
the Renaissance, when their translation awakened 
minds to mathematical problems and their solu- 
tions that would not otherwise have come. 

We know much less of the life of the third of 
the great trio of teachers and students of Alex- 
andria, Apollonius of Perga. Perhaps it should 
be enough for us to know that his contemporaries 
spoke of him as " the great geometer," though 
they were familiar with Euclid's book and with 
Archimedes' mighty work. Apollonius was surely 
a student of Alexandria for many years and he 
was probably also a professor of mathematics 
there. He developed especially what we know 
now as conic- sections. His book on the subject 
contains practically all of the theorems to be 
found in our text-books of analytical geometry 
or conic sections of the present time. It was de- 
veloped with rigorous mathematical logic and 
Euclidean conclusiveness. These three men show 
us beyond all doubt how finely the mathematical 
side of the university developed. 

After Archimedes the greatest mechanical 
genius of the University of Alexandria was 
Heron. To him we owe a series of inventions 
and discoveries in hydrostatics and the construe- 



80 THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 

tion of various mechanical toys that have been 
used in the laboratories since. There is even a 
little engine run by steam— the teolipile — in- 
vented by him, which shows how close the old 
Greeks were to the underlying principles of dis- 
coveries that were destined to come only after the 
development of industries created a demand for 
them in the after time. Heron's engine is a globe 
of copper mounted on pivots, containing water, 
which on being heated produces steam that finds 
its way out through tubes bent so as to open in 
opposite directions on each side of the globe. The 
imj^act of the escaping steam on the air sets the 
globe revolving, and the principle of the turbine 
engine at work is clear. We have used steam 
for nearly 200 j^ears always with a reciprocating 
type of movement, so that to apply energy in one 
direction the engine has had to move its parts 
backwards and forwards, but here was a direct- 
motion turbine engine in the long ago. Our great 
steamboats, the Lusitania and the Mauretania, 
now cross the ocean by the use of this principle 
and not by the reciprocating engine, and it is evi- 
dent that it is along these lines the future de- 
velopments of the application of steam are to take 
place. 

Another extremely interesting invention made 
by Heron is the famous fountain called by his 
name, and which still is used to illustrate prin- 
ciples in pneumatics in our classrooms and labora- 
tories. By means of condensed air water is made 



THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 81 

to spring from a jet in a continuous stream and 
seems paradoxically to rise higher than its source. 
Probably his best work in the domain of physics 
IS that on pneumatics in which are given not 
only a series of discussions, but of experiments 
and demonstrations on the elasticity of air and of 
steam. These experiments could only have been 
conducted in what we now call a physical labora- 
tory. Indeed these inventions of his are still used 
in laboratories for demonstration purposes. While 
we may think, then, that the foundation of labora- 
tories was reserved to our day, there is abundant 
evidence for their existence at the University of 
Alexandria. We shall return to this subject a 
little later, when the evidence from other depart- 
ments has been presented, and then it will be 
clear, I think, that the laboratory methods were 
favorite modes of teaching at the University 
of Alexandria and .were in use in nearly all de- 
partments of science both for research and for 
demonstration purposes. 

The work of the other great teacher at Alex- 
andria which was to influence mankind next to 
that of Euclid, was not destined to withstand 
the critical study of succeeding generations, though 
it served for some 1,500 years as the basis of 
their thinking in astronomy. This was the work 
of Ptolemy, the great professor of astronomy at 
Alexandria of the first century after Christ. It 
is easy for us now to see the absurdity of 
Ptolemy's system. It is even hard for us to 



82 THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 

understand how men could have accepted it. It 
must not be forgotten, however, that it solved all 
the astronomical problems of fifteen centuries 
and that it even enabled men, by its application, 
to foretell events in the heavens, and scientific 
prophecy is sometimes claimed to be the highest 
test of the truth of a system of scientific thought. 
Even so late as 1620 Francis Bacon refused to 
accept Copernicanism, already before the world 
for more than a century, because it did not, as it 
seemed to him, solve all the difficulties, while 
Ptolemy's system did. As great an astronomer 
as Tycho Brahe living in the century after Coper- 
nicus still clung to Ptolemy's teaching. It must 
not be forgotten that when Galileo restated 
Copernicanism, the reason for the rejection of 
his teaching by all the astronomers of Europe 
almost without exception, was that his reasons 
were not conclusive. They preferred to hold on 
to the old which had been so satisfying than to 
accept the new which seemed dubious. Their wis- 
dom in this will be best appreciated from the fact 
that none of Galileo's reasons maintained them- 
selves. 

Though his system has been rejected, still 
Ptolemy must be looked up to as one of the great 
teachers of mankind and his work the " Alma- 
gest " as one of the great contributions to human 
knowledge. The fact that he represented a 
climax of astronomical development at Alexan- 
dria some fom- centuries after the foundation of 



THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 83 

that university, serves to show how much that first 
modern university occupied itself for all the cen- 
turies of its highest prestige, with physical science 
as well as with mathematics. Astronomy, physics, 
especially hydrostatics and mechanics, were all 
wonderfully developed. Generations of professors 
had given themselves to research and to the pub- 
lication of important works quite as in the modern 
time, and Alexandria may well claim the right 
to be placed beside any university for what it 
accomplished in physical science, and rank high 
if not highest in the list of great research insti- 
tutions adding new knowledge to old, leading men 
across the borderland of the unknown in science 
and furnishing that precious incentive to growing 
youth to occupy itself with the scientific prob- 
lems of the world around it. 

The most important part of the scientific work 
of the University of Alexandria to my mind re- 
mains to be spoken of, and that is the medical 
department. It is a well-known law in the his- 
tory of medicine that, whenever medical schools 
are attached to universities in such a way that 
students who come to the medical department 
have been thoroughly trained by preliminary 
studies and have such standards of scholarship 
as obtain in genuine university work, then great 
progress in medicine and in medical education 
is accomplished. This was emimently the case 
at Alexandria. The departments of the arts, 
of linguistics and of philosophy were gathered 



84 THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 

around the great building known in Greek as the 
Mouseion, a word that has come to us through 
the Latin under the guise of Museum. This 
temple of the Muses contained collections of vari- 
ous kinds and near it was situated the great li- 
brary. Not far away was the Serapeum, or Tem- 
ple of Serapis, the Goddess of Life, around which 
were centred the biological sciences, and close 
by was the medical school. As teachers for this 
medical school some of the greatest physicians of 
the time were secured by the first Ptolemy and a 
great period in medical history began. 

The practical wisdom guiding the Ptolemys in 
the organization of this medical school will be 
best appreciated from the fact that they took the 
first step by inviting two distinguished pltysicians, 
the products of the two greatest medical schools 
of the time, to laj^ the foundations at Alexandria. 
They were probably the best investigators of their 
time and they had behind them fine traditions of 
research, thorough observation and conservative 
reasoning and theorizing on scientific subjects. 
Erasistratos was a disciple of INIetrodoros, the 
son-in-law of Aristotle. He had studied for a 
time undel- another great teacher, Chrysippos of 
Cnidos. We are likely to know much more of 
Cos than of Cnidos because of the reputation 
in the after time of Hippocrates, whose name is 
so closely connected with Cos that the two are 
almost invariably associated, but Cnidos was one 
of the great university towns of the later Greek 



THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 85 

civilization. Eudoxus the astronomer, Ctesias 
the writer on Persian history, and Sostratos the 
builder of the great lighthouse, one of the seven 
wonders of the world, the Pharos at Alexandria, 
were products of this universitj^ Its medical 
school was famous when Cos had somewhat de- 
clined, and Chrysippos was one of the leading 
physicians of the world and one of the acknowl- 
edged great teachers of medicine when Erasis- 
tratos studied under him at Cnidos, and obtained 
that scientific training and incentive to original 
research which was to prove so valuable to Alex- 
andria. 

His colleague, Herophilos, was quite as dis- 
tinguished as Erasistratos and owed his training 
to the rival school of Cos. Whether it was inten- 
tional or not to secure these two products of rival 
schools for the healthy spirit of competition that 
would come from it, and because they wanted to 
have at Alexandria the emulation that would 
naturally be aroused by such a condition, is not 
known, but there can be no doubt of the wisdom 
of the choice and of the foresight which dictated 
it. Herophilos had studied medicine under Prax- 
agoras, one of the best-known successors of Hip- 
pocrates. While distinguished as a surgeon he 
had more influence on medicine than almost any 
man of his time, except possibly Erasistratos. He 
was, however, a great anatomist and, above all, 
a zoologist who, according to tradition, had ob- 
tained his knowledge of animals from the most 



86 THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 

careful zootomy of literally thousands of speci- 
mens. His fair fame is blackened by the other 
tradition that he practised vivisection on human 
beings — criminals being turned over to him for 
that purpose by the Ptolemys, who were deeply 
interested in his researches. The traditions in this 
matter, however, serve to confirm the idea of his 
zeal as an investigator and his ardent labors in 
medical science. Tertullian declares that he dis- 
sected at least 600 living persons. We know 
that he did much dissection of human cadavers 
and there is question whether Tertullian's state- 
ment was not gross exaggeration due to confusion 
between dissection and vivisection. 

Both of these men did some magnificent work 
upon the brain. This being the first period in the 
history of humanity when human beings could 
be dissected freely, it is not surprising that they 
should take up brain anatomy with ardent devo- 
tion, in the hope to solve some of the many human 
problems that seemed to centre in this complex 
organ. Before this anatomy had been learned 
mainly from animals, and as human beings differ 
most widely from animals by their brain, natu- 
rally, as soon as the opportunity presented itself, 
anatomists gave themselves to thorough work on 
this structure where so many discoveries were 
waiting to be made. After the brain and nervous 
system the heart was studied, and Erasistratos' 
description of its valves, of its general structure 
and even of its physiology, show how much he 



THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 87 

knew. To know something of the work of these 
two anatomists is to see at once what is accom- 
plished in a university medical school where medi- 
cal science, and not the mere practice of medicine 
alone, is the object of teachers and students. I 
have told the story of this in my address before 
the graduates of the St. Louis JNIedical University 
Medical School, and here I shall simply refer you 
to that.* 

Of course all these studies at the university 
could not be conducted without laboratory equip- 
ment. Of itself the dissecting room is a labora- 
tory and until very recent years it was the only 
laboratory that most of the medical schools had. 
The numerous experiments in vivisection, if they 
really took place, required special arrangements 
and could only be conducted in what we now call 
a laboratory of physiology. This is not idle talk 
but represents the realities of the situation. Other 
laboratories there must have been. It would be 
quite impossible to conceive of a man like Archi- 
medes carrying on his work, especially of the 
application of mathematical principles to me- 
chanics, of the demonstration of mechanical prin- 
ciples themselves and of the invention of the many 
interesting machines which he made, without what 
we call laboratory facilities. The Ptolemys were 

* The details of what was accomplished in the Medical Department 
at Alexandria were given to some extent at least in the lecture in 
Brooklyn, but are omitted here in order to avoid repetitions in the 
printed copy. 



88 THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 

interested in his work, they supphed him with a 
place to do it, many of his advanced students 
at least must have been interested in this work 
so that, as I see it, there was what we would now 
call a physical laboratory in connection with his 
teaching at the University of Alexandria. 

What we know about the development of 
zoology under Erasistratos and Herophilos would 
seem to indicate that there must have been such 
special facilities for the investigation of zoologi- 
cal problems as we would call a laboratory of 
physiology. A magnificent collection of plants 
was made for the university and these were 
studied and classified, and while we hear nothing 
of their dissection, there were at least botanical 
rooms for methodical study, if not botanical lab- 
oratories. Ptolemy's work represented the cul- 
mination of astronomical information which had 
been gathered for several centuries. This could 
only be brought together in what we would now 
call an observatory and this represents another 
laboratory of physical science. Our laboratory 
work, therefore, must have been anticipated to a 
great extent. We must not forget that our uni- 
versity laboratories are only a couple of genera- 
tions old altogetlier and that they represent a 
very recent development of educational work. It 
is extremely interesting, therefore, to find them 
anticipated in germ at least, if not in actuality, 
at the first modern university of which we have 
sufficiently complete records to enable us to ap- 



THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 89 

preciate just the sort of work that was being 
done and the ways and modes of its education. 

I think that even this comparatively meagre 
description of the first university of which we have 
knowledge makes it very clear that Alexandria 
deserves the name of the First Modern Univer- 
sity. It resembled our own in so many ways that 
I, for one, find it impossible to discover any es- 
sential difference between them. At Alexandria 
they anticipated every phase of modern univer- 
sity education. Their literature was studied from 
a scientific standpoint. They devoted themselves 
to an overwhelming extent to the study of the 
physical sciences and mathematics, their pro- 
fessors were inventors, developers of practical 
applications of science, experts to whom appeal 
was made when important scientific questions had 
to be settled, and their teaching w^as done with 
demonstrations and a laboratory system very like 
our own. Nothing that I know illustrates better 
the tendency of human achievement not to rep- 
resent advance but to occur in cycles than the 
story of this first modern university. That is 
why I have tried to tell it to you as an exquisite 
illustration of How Old the New Is in Education. 



MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC 
UNIVERSITIES 



" Qui ad pauca respiciunt faciliter pronuntiant." — An 

Old Philosopher. 

[Those who know httle readily pronounce judgment.] 



MEDIAEVAL SCIENTIFIC 
UNIVERSITIES * 

Probably nothing is more surprising to any 
one who knows the history of science and of scien- 
tific education than the attitude of mind of the 
present generations, educated as they are mainly 
along scientific lines, toward the supposed lack of 
interest of preceding generations in science. Our 
scholars and professors seem to be almost uni- 
versally of the opinion that the last few genera- 
tions are the first who ever devoted themselves 
seriously to the study of science, or who, indeed, 
were free enough from superstitions and persua- 
sions and beliefs of many kinds to give themselves 
up freely to scientific investigation. In the light 
of what we know or, perhaps I should say, what 
we are coming to know now with regard to the 
educational interests of the men of the various 
times, this would be an amusing, if it were not an 
amazing, presumption on our part. Over and over 
again in the world's history men have been in- 

* The material for this address was originally gathered for a 
lecture in a course on the History of Education delivered to the 
Sisters of Charity of Mount St. Vincent's, some 500 in number; 
teachers in the Catholic public schools of New York City, and for cor- 
responding lectures to the Academy of the Sacred Heart, Kenwood. 
The address was delivered substantially in its present form at the 
Catholic Club of Cornell University, under the title " The Relations 
of the Church to Science." 

98 



94 MEDI/EVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

terested in science, both in pure science and in ap- 
plied science, in the culture sciences and in the 
practical sciences. 

Apparently men forget that philosophy is sci- 
ence and ethics is science and metaphysics is 
scientific and logic is science and there is a sci- 
ence of language. Of course the protest that will 
be heard at once is that what we now mean by 
science is physical science. Even taking the word 
science in this narrower sense, however, how can 
people forget that our mathematics comes to us 
from the old Greeks, that old Greek contribu- 
tions to medicine and, above all, to the scientific 
side of it still remain valuable, that physical sci- 
ence, pure and applied, developed wonderfully 
at the University of Alexandria, that there was 
a beginning of chemistry and the great founda- 
tions of astronomy laid in the long ago, and that 
men evidently were quite as much interested in 
the problems of nature around them as they have 
been at any time: Archimedes insisting that if 
he only had some place to rest his lever he could 
move the world, inventing the screw pump, 
fashioning his great burning-mirrors, and a little 
later Heron inventing the first germ of the turbine 
engine, while all the time their colleagues and 
contemporaries were developing the mathematics 
in connection with them, are studying both pure 
and applied science. It is simply failure to state 
in terms of the present what was accomplished in 
the past, that has permitted people to retain 



MEDIJi:VAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 95 

curious notions of the absence of science in 
antiquity. 

Probably most people would be quite ready 
to concede, and especially after even a brief call- 
ing to their attention of some educational facts, 
that the old Greeks did enjoy a scientific educa- 
tional development; it would jirobably even be 
admitted that the traditions of science of various 
kinds from Egypt, from Chaldea, from Babylonia 
point to previous eras of scientific development. 
They would probably still insist, however, that 
there had been a long interval of utter neglect 
of science lasting nearly 2,000 years and that 
our interest is properly a resurrection of science- 
study after a long burial. They do not even 
hesitate to blame the educational authorities of 
the interval for their failure to occupy them- 
selves with scientific ideas and are prone to find 
reasons of various kinds to account for this fail- 
ure. As the Church was dominant in education 
during the Middle Ages this makes a ready scape- 
goat, and so we have heard much of the repres- 
sion of scientific study by the ecclesiastical au- 
thorities, and the determined effort made to keep 
men from inquiring about the problems of nature 
around them, because this would lead them to 
think for themselves and have doubts with regard to 
faith. Indeed this attitude of mind in the history 
of science is so usual that it is a commonplace, 
and men who are supposed to be scholars talk off- 
handedly of direct Church opposition to science. 



96 MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

There is no doubt at all that the Church was 
the commanding influence in education during the 
Middle Ages. Whatever was studied was taken 
up because the Church authorities were interested 
in it. Whatever was not studied was absent 
from the curriculum because of their lack of in- 
terest. While study was magnificently encour- 
aged there were many subjects, though not near 
so many as is often thought, that were repressed. 
The Church must certainly be held responsible 
in every way for the teaching of the Middle Ages, 
both as regards its extent and its limitations. 
The charters of the universities were granted by 
the Popes. The universities themselves usually 
were cathedral schools which had developed, and 
to which had become attached various graduate 
departments. The ecclesiastical authorities were 
in control of them. The rector of the university 
was usually the archdeacon of the cathedral or the 
chancellor of the diocese. The professors at the 
universities were practically all of them in clerical 
orders, and the great body of the students were 
clerics, in the sense that they had assumed at 
least minor orders and were supposed to be in 
prej^aration for a clerical life. This was, indeed, 
the one sure way to secure exemption from the 
military duties of the time and to prevent inter- 
ference of various kinds by the civil power with 
the leisure necessary for study. No man had any 
essential rights in the Middle Ages except such 
as were conferred on him by some organization 



MEDLEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 97 

to which he belonged, and the clerical order was 
particularly powerful. 

Now the interesting phase of the education 
afforded by these universities under ecclesiastical 
control with clerical students and professors con- 
stituting the large majority of members, with the 
influence of the religious orders paramount for 
centuries, is that it was entirely scientific in char- 
acter and largely occupied with the physical sci- 
ences, though the culture sciences fomied the 
basis of it. Huxley, though he is surely the last 
man of recent times who would be suspected for a 
moment of exaggerating the scientific significance 
of mediaeval education, recognized this fact very 
well and stated it very emphatically. In his 
Inaugural Address on Universities Actual and 
Ideal, delivered as Rector of Aberdeen Univer- 
sity, after discussing the subject with evident care- 
ful preparation, he said: 

" The scholars of the mediaeval universities 
seem to have studied grammar, logic and rhetoric; 
arithmetic and geometry; astronomy, theology 
and music. Thus, their work, however imperfect 
and faulty, judged by modern lights, it may have 
been, brought them face to face with all the lead- 
ing aspects of the many-sided mind of man. For 
these studies did really contain, at any rate in 
embryo, sometimes it may be in caricature, what 
we now call philosophy, mathematical and phys- 
ical science and art. And I doubt if the cur- 
riculum of any modern university shows so clear 



98 MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

and generous a comprehension of what is meant 
by culture, as this old Trivium and Quadrivium 
does." (Italics mine.) 

Of course Huxley says, " sometimes it may be in 
caricature." We must not forget, however, that 
first even Huxley hesitates to say that it is carica- 
ture, for he knows how easy it is to be mistaken 
in our estimation of the true significance of an 
old-time mode of thought, and then, too, he knew 
comparatively how little we were sure of the real 
thoughts and conclusions of these men of the olden 
time because of defective sympathy and even de- 
fective knowledge of their work. Our knowl- 
edge in this matter has greatly increased since his 
time. As a matter of fact, the more we know 
about these old masters and the mediaeval uni- 
versities the less are we likely to think of their 
work as lacking in seriousness in any sense. The 
quarter of a century that has elapsed since Hux- 
ley so cogently urged this at Aberdeen has 
brought many facts unknown to us before and 
has shown us what good work, even in the phys- 
ical sciences, was accomplished in these old-time 
universities. 

For instance, nothing is more common in the 
mouths of certain kinds of scholars than the ex- 
pressions of wonder as to why men did not study 
nature more assiduously before our time. Here 
is a magnificent open book full of the most allur- 
ing lessons which any one may study for himself, 
and that somehow it is presumed men neglected 



MEDIyEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 99 

down to our time. We are the age of nature 
students, and preceding times are looked at 
askance for having neglected the opportunities 
that lay so invitingly open to them in this subject. 
It has always been a wonder to me how people 
dare to talk this way. Our old literatures are full 
of observations on nature. In my book on " The 
Popes and Science " I take Dante as a typical 
product of the universities of the thirteenth cen- 
tury, and show without any difficulty as it seems 
to me, that there is no poet of the modern time 
who can draw figures from nature which demand 
even a detailed knowledge of nature with so much 
confidence as Dante. He knows the most inti- 
mate details about the birds, about many animals, 
about the ways of flowers, about children, de- 
scribes some experiments in science, has a wide 
knowledge of astronomy and in general is fa- 
miliar with nature quite as much if not more than 
any modern writer not ecc professo a naturalist. 
He describes the metamorphosis of insects, how 
the ants communicate with one another, knows 
the secrets of the bees and exhibits wide knowl- 
edge of the secrets of bird life. 

The presumption that people did not study na- 
ture in the olden time is quite unjustified. They 
did not write long books about trivial subjects of 
nature-study. They did not conclude that be- 
cause they were seeing something for the first 
time, that that was the first time in the world's 
history it had ever been seen. They were gentle, 



100 MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

kindly scholars who assumed that others had 
eyes and saw too, and as fortunately there was 
no printing press there was not that hurried 
rushing into print, with superficial observations 
and still more superficial conclusions, which has 
characterized so much of our recent literature of 
nature-study and that has been so well dubbed 
" nature faking." Of course we have had faking 
of the same kind in nearly everything else: we 
have history faking in our supposed historical 
romances, science faking in our pseudo-science, 
science-history faking in our ready presumption 
that the men of the olden time could not have 
had our interests, and, above all — may I now 
say it? — in our cheap conclusion that there must 
have been some reason for their lack of interest in 
science, and then the assumption without any- 
thing further, that it must have been because of 
the Church. 

Just as soon as there is question of there having 
been any serious scientific study during the Mid- 
dle Ages, in the sense of observations in physical 
science, investigation of the physical phenomena 
of nature and the drawing of conclusions from 
them and the evolving of laws, there are a large 
number of people who consider themselves very 
well informed, who will at once object that this 
must be quite absurd, since at this time Lord 
Chancellor Bacon had not as yet laid down the 
great foundations of the physical sciences in his 
discussion of inductive reasoning. I have already 



MEDIJ5VAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 101 

ventured to suggest, in the address on " The First 
Modern University," how utterly ridiculous any 
such notion is. I have quoted Lord Macaulay 
and Huxley as ridiculing those who entertained 
such an idea. Here I may be permitted to recur 
to the subject by quotations from the same au- 
thorities. I have often found that anything I 
myself said in this matter was at once considered 
as quite incredible, since my feelings were entirely 
too favorable toward the Middle Ages and then 
my religious affiliations are somehow supposed 
to unfit me for scientific thinking. Fortunately 
Macaulay and Huxley have expressed themselves 
in this matter even more vigorously than I would 
be likely to, and so I may simply quote them. 

As Lord Macaulay wrote in his well-known 
essay : 

" The vulgar notion about Bacon we take to 
be this, that he invented a new method of arriv- 
ing at truth, which method is called induction, 
and that he detected some fallacy in the syllogistic 
reasoning which had been in vogue before his 
time. This notion is as well founded as that of 
the people who, in the JNIiddle Ages, imagined 
that Virgil was a great conjurer. Many who are 
far too well informed to talk such extravagant 
nonsense entertain what we think incorrect no- 
tions as to what Bacon really effected in this 
matter." 

Still more apposite is what Professor Huxley 
has to say. Discoursing on the phenomena of 



102 MEDLEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

organic nature, after warning his auditors not to 
suppose that scientific investigation is " some 
kind of modern black art," he adds: " I say that 
you might easily gather this impression from the 
manner in which many persons speak of scientific 
inquiry, or talk about inductive and deductive 
jjhilosophy, or the principles of the ' Baconian 
philosophy.' To hear people talk about the great 
Chancellor — and a very great man he certainly 
was^ — you would think that it was he who had 
invented science, and that there was no such thing 
as sound reasoning before the time of Queen 
EHzabeth. 

" There are many men who, though knowing 
absolutely nothing of the subject with which they 
may be dealing, wish nevertheless to damage the 
author of some view with which they think fit to 
disagree. What they do is not to go and learn 
something about the subject; . . but they abuse 
the originator of the view they question, in a gen- 
eral manner, and wind up by saying that, ' After 
all, you know, the principles and method of this 
author are totally opposed to the canons of the 
Baconian philosophy.' Then everybody applauds, 
as a matter of course, and agrees that it must be 
so." 

Lord Bacon himself so little understood true 
science that he condemned Copernicanism because 
it failed to solve the problems of the universe, and 
condemned Dr. Gilbert, the great founder in 
Magnetism, whose work was the best exemphfica- 



MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 103 

tion of inductive science of that time. Of course 
Bacon did not invent science nor its methods. 
He was only a pubhcist popularizing them. They 
had existed in the minds of all logical thinkers 
from the beginning. His great namesake, Friar 
Bacon, much better deserves to be thought a 
pioneer in modern physical science than the 
chancellor, — and he was a mediaeval university man. 
We are prone to think of the old-time universities 
as classical or literary schools with certain limited 
post-graduate features, more or less distantly 
smacking of science. The reason for this is easy 
to understand. It is because out of such classical 
and literary colleges our present universities, with 
their devotion to science, were developed or trans- 
formed during the last generation or two. It 
is to be utterly ignorant of mediaeval education, 
however, to think that the classical and literary 
schools are types of university work in the Middle 
Ages. The original universities of the thirteenth 
and fourteenth centuries paid no attention to 
language at all except inasmuch as Latin, the 
universal language, was studied in order that 
there might be a common ground of understand- 
ing. Latin was not studied at all, however, from 
its literary side; to style as such the professors in 
the old medigeval universities and the writers of 
the books of the time paid no attention. Indeed 
it was because of this neglect of style in litera- 
ture and of the niceties of classical Latin that the 
university men of recent centuries before our own, 



104 MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

so bitterly condemned the old, mediseval teachers 
and were so utterly unsympathetic wath their 
teaching and methods. We, however, have come 
once more into a time when style means little, in- 
deed, entirely too little, and when the matter is 
supposed to be everything, and we should have 
more sympathy with our older forefathers in edu- 
cation who were in the same boat. We have in- 
herited traditions of misunderstanding in this mat- 
ter, but we should know the reasons for them 
and then they will disappear. 

As a matter of fact, exactly the same thing 
happened in our modern change of university 
interests during the latter half of the nineteenth 
century as happened in the latter half of the 
fifteenth century in Italy, and in the next century 
throughout Europe. With the fall of Constan- 
tinople the Greeks were sent packing by the Turks 
and they carried with them into Italy manu- 
scripts of the old Greek authors, examples of old 
Greek art and the classic spirit of devotion to 
literature as such. A new educational movement 
termed the study of the humanities had been 
making some way in Italy during the preceding 
half-century before the fall of Constantinople, but 
now interest in it came with a rush. The clergy- 
men, the nobility, even the women of the time 
became interested in the New Learning, as it was 
called. Private schools of various kinds were 
opened for the study of it, and everybody con- 
sidered that it was the one thing that people who 



MEDI/EVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 105 

wanted to keep up to date, smart people, for 
they have always been with us, should not fail 
to be familiar with. The humanities became the 
fashion, just as science became the fashion in the 
nineteenth century. Fashion has a wonderfully 
pervasive power and it runs in cycles in intel- 
lectual matters as well as in clothes. 

The devotees of the New Learning demanded a 
place for it in the universities. University facul- 
ties perfectly confident, as university faculties 
always are, that what they had in the curriculum 
was quite good enough, and conservative enough 
to think that what had been good enough for 
their forefathers was surely ' good enough also 
for this generation, refused to admit the new 
studies. For a considerable period, therefore, 
the humanities had to be pursued in institutions 
apart from the universities. Indeed it was not 
until the Jesuits showed how valuable classical 
studies might be made for developmental pur- 
poses and true education that they were admitted 
into the universities. 

Note the similarity with certain events in our 
own time in all this. Two generations ago the 
universities refused to admit science. They were 
training men in their undergraduate departments 
by means of classical literature. They argued 
exactly as did the old mediaeval universities with 
regard to the new learning, that they had no 
place for science. Science had to be learned, then, 
in separate institutions for a time. The scientific 



106 MEDIAEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

educational movement made its way, however, 
until finally it was admitted into the university 
curricula. Now we are in the midst of an edu- 
cational period when the classics are losing in 
favor so rapidly that it seems as though it would 
not be long before they would be entirely re- 
placed by the sciences, except, in so far as those 
are concerned who are looking for education in 
literature and the classic languages for special 
purposes. 

It will be interesting, then, to trace the story 
of the old mediaeval universities as far as the sci- 
ence in their curriculum was concerned, because 
it represents much 'more closely than we might 
have imagined, or than is ordinarily thought, the 
preceding phase of education to the classical 
period which we have seen go out of fashion to 
so great an extent in the last two generations. 
We shall readily find that at least as much time 
was devoted in the mediaeval universities to the 
physical sciences as in our own, and that the cul- 
ture sciences filled up the rest of the curriculum. 
Philosophy, which occupied so prominent a place 
in older university life, was not only a culture 
science, but physical science as well, as indeed the 
name natural philosophy, which remained almost 
down to our day, attests. 

Physical science was not the sole object of these 
mediaeval institutions of learning, but they were 
thoroughly scientific. The main object of the 
universities in the olden time was to secure such 



MEDIAEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 107 

discussion of the problems of man's relation to 
the universe, to his Creator, to his fellow-creatures 
and to the material world as would enable him 
to appreciate his rights and duties and to use 
his powers. Huxley declared that the trivium and 
quadrivium, the seven liberal arts studied in the 
mediaeval universities, probably demonstrate a 
clearer and more generous comprehension of what 
is meant by culture than the curriculum of 
any modern university. Language was learned 
through grammar, the science of language. Rea- 
soning was learned through logic, the science 
of reasoning; the art of expression through rheto- 
ric, a combination of art and science with applica- 
tions to practical life. Mathematics was studied 
with a zeal and a success that only those who 
know the history of mediaeval mathematics can at 
all appreciate. Cantor, the German historian of 
mathematics, in hundreds of pages of a large 
volume, has told the story of the development of 
mathematics during the centuries before the 
Renaissance, that is from the thirteenth to the 
fifteenth, in a way that makes it very clear that 
the teaching at the universities in this subject 
was not dry and sterile, but eminently productive, 
successful in research, and with constant addi- 
tions to knowledge such as live universities ought 
to make. 

Then there was astronomy, metaphysics, theol- 
ogy, music and law and medicine. The science 
of law was developed and, above all, great col- 



108 MEDIAEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

lections of laws made for purposes of scientific 
study. Of astronomy every one was expected to 
know much, of medicine we shall have considerable 
to say hereafter, but in the meantime it is well 
to recall that these mediaeval centuries maintained 
a high standard of medical education and brought 
some wonderful developments in the sciences 
allied to medicine and above all in their aj^plica- 
tions to therapeutics. Surgery never reached so 
high a plane of achievement down to our own 
time, as during the period when it was studied 
so faithfully and developed so marvellously at 
the mediaeval universities. It was inasmuch as 
a knowledge of i:)hysics was needed for the de- 
velopment of metaphysics that the mediaeval 
schoolmen devoted themselves to the study of 
nature. They turned with as much ardor and 
devotion as did Herbert Spencer in the nineteenth 
century, to the accumulation of such information 
with regard to nature as would enable them to 
draw conclusions, establish general j^rinciples and 
lay firm foundations for reasonings with regard 
to the creature and the Creator. It is, above all, 
this phase of mediaeval teaching work, of the 
schoolmen's ardent interest that is misunder- 
stood, often ignored and only too frequently mis- 
represented in the modern time. 

For instance, in the discussion of the status of 
matter in the universe the scholastics and notably 
Thomas Aquinas had come to the conclusion 
that matter was absolutely indestructible. He 



MEDLEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 109 

even went so far as to say that man could not 
destroy it, and God would not annihilate it. 
Nihil omnino in nihilum redigctur — nothing at 
all will ever be reduced to nothingness, was his 
dictum as the conclusion of a course of lectures on 
this subject. He saw the changes in matter all 
round him that were supposed to be destructive, 
the burnings, the vaporizations, the solutions, the 
putrefactions and all the rest, but he knew that 
these only brought changes in matter and not 
destruction of the underlying substance. For 
him, as for all the scholastic philosophers, matter 
was composed of two principles, as they were 
called. One of these was prime matter and the 
other form. To prime matter, one of these, mat- 
ter or substance owed all its negative qualities, 
inertia and the like. To form, the dynamic ele- 
ment or principle, it owed all its individuating 
qualities. Prime matter was the same in all 
things. Form was the energy or bundle of ener- 
gies, the dynamic principle, as we have said, which 
entering into prime matter, made the different 
kinds of matter that we speak of. 

It is extremely interesting to compare this old 
scholastic teaching with the modern ideas of the 
composition of matter and especially the notions 
which have come to us from researches in physical 
chemistry in recent years. Our scientists no 
longer believe that we have some eighty different 
elements, essential^ different kinds of matter, that 
cannot by any chance or process be changed one 



110 MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

into another. We have seen one form of ele- 
mentary matter changing into another, heHum 
emanations becoming radium, have heard of Pro- 
fessor Ramsay's transmutation of various ele- 
ments, and have about come to the conclusion 
that in the radio-active substances we have a won- 
derful transmuting power. A prominent Ameri- 
can professor of chemistry declared not long since 
that he would like to treat a large quantity of 
lead ore in order to extract from it all the silver 
which so constantly occurs in connection with it 
in the natural state, and then having put the lead 
ore aside for a score of years, would like to ex- 
amine it again, confident that he would find traces 
of silver in it once more, which had developed 
as a consequence of the radio-activity present in 
the substance and which is constantly changing 
lead into silver in small quantities. Newton's 
declaration, when he saw crystals of gold in con- 
nection with copper, that gold had been developed 
from the copper, seemed very foolish a century 
ago, but no one would consider it so at the pres- 
ent moment. 

We are prone to think that these old mediaeval 
philosophers accepting to some extent at least the 
philosopher's stone with its supposed capacity 
for changing baser metals into precious, and with 
their acceptance of the transmutation of sub- 
stances, cannot have had any real scientific bent 
of mind. We are coming to the realization, how- 
ever, that in many ways by pure reasoning, in 



MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 111 

conjunction with such obsei'vation as they had at 
hand, they anticipated our most recent conclu- 
sions in very marvellous ways. We know now 
that radium, or at least radio-active substances, 
represent the philosopher's stone of the olden 
time. We are not surprised at the transmuta- 
tion of metals and of substances, on the contrary, 
we are looking for it. 

I remember once stating the old theory of mat- 
ter and form to a distinguished professor in chem- 
istry in this country, and he was struck by the 
similarity of it to what are the present accepted 
ideas of the composition of matter. He asked 
why this teaching was not more generally known. 
I had to tell him that in every Catholic school of 
philosophy, it was taught as a basic doctrine, and 
that far from being concealed it was the very- 
touchstone of Catholic philosophic teaching, and 
had often been the subject of deprecation and 
contemptuous remarks on the part of those who 
thought that it represented somewhat foolish old- 
fashioned teaching handed down to us from the 
backwardness and abysm of time. 

We have demonstrated the indestructibility of 
matter in modern times by experimental methods. 
The mediaeval schoolmen reached similar con- 
clusions, however, by strict reasoning from the 
premises of observation that they had in the olden 
times. We may be apt to think that they knew 
very little about nature and the details of physical 
science, but that will be only because we do not 



112 MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

know their great books. Albertus Magnus is a 
typical example of a renowned teacher of the 
thirteenth century who was, however, at the same 
time a highly respected member of his order, 
holding important official positions in it and 
thoroughly honored and respected by his ecclesi- 
astical sujDcriors so that he was made a bishop, yet 
writing volumes of observation with regard to 
nearly every phase of physical science. A list of 
his books reads like a section of a catalogue of 
a library of j^hysical science. I have told the 
story of his career in the second series of " Catho- 
lic Churchmen in Science," but the names of his 
volumes are sufficient to show what sort of work he 
was doing. He has volumes on chemistry, botany, 
on physics, on cosmography, on animal locomo- 
tion, on respiration, on generation and corruption, 
on age and death and life, on phases of psychol- 
ogy, the soul, sense and sensation, memory, sleep, 
the intellect and many another subject. Those 
who think that there was no attention paid to 
science in the Middle Ages must know nothing 
at all of Albertus Magnus' work. 

Above all, those who talk thus are entirely 
ignorant of all that Roger Bacon did. Roger 
Bacon himself was a student of the University 
of Paris. He was a professor there. He corre- 
sponded with the scientists of Europe quite as 
frequently or at least as significantly as pro- 
fessors of the modern time do with each other. 
Students submitted their discoveries to him. We 



MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 113 

have Peregrinus' letter to him with regard to 
magnetism and electricity and know of others. 
We have his own books, in which he treats not 
only the scientific problems, but inventions and 
applied science of all kinds. At the present time 
his interest in aeronautics has a special appeal to 
us. He was sure that men would sometime make 
a successful airship. He even thought that he 
could make one himself, but his experiments 
proved unsuccessful. His theory of it was very 
interesting. In his work " De Secretis Artis et 
Naturae Operibus " he writes that a machine 
could be constructed in which a man sitting in 
the centre might move wings by means of a crank 
and thus, quite after the fashion of birds, fly 
through the air. It was he who wrote that the 
time would come when carriages would move along 
the roads without men or horses to pull them. At 
the moment he was experimenting with gun- 
powder. He realized, therefore, that sometime 
men would harness explosives and use them for 
motor purposes. That is, of course, just what we 
are doing with gasolene. 

He suggested that boats would run over the 
water without oars and without sails. He was 
anticipating our motor boat. He taught that 
light moves with a definite rate of velocity, though 
that fact was not demonstrated for several cen- 
turies after his time. He worked out most of 
the theory of lenses as we have it at the present 
time. He was sure that experiment and observa- 



114 MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

tion constituted the only way by which knowledge 
of nature could be obtained. In this he was but 
following his great teacher Albertus Magnus, who 
insisted that in natural philosophy experiment 
alone brought sure knowledge ; " ETpemnentum 
solum certificat in talihusf are his own words. 
Roger Bacon's devotion to mathematics shows 
how thoroughly scientific was the trend of his 
mind. Without mathematics he was sure that one 
could not reach scientific knowledge, or that what 
one did get was without certainty. Some of his 
expressions in this matter are strikingly modern. 
It is no wonder that his writings and teachings 
were so great a surprise to his generation that 
the Pope ordered him to write out his knowledge 
in books. Without this order we would not have 
had Roger Bacon's great works, for his vow of 
poverty voluntarily taken forbade him to be pos- 
sessed of sufficient money to enable him to pur- 
chase writing materials, which were then very 
expensive. 

Indeed the mathematics of the mediseval uni- 
versities is the best proof of the seriousness of 
their devotion to science and, may it also be said, 
of their success. Cantor, in his " History of 
Mathematics," and he is the great authority in the 
matter, devotes nearly 100 pages of his second 
volume to the mathematicians of the thirteenth 
century alone, two of whom, Leonard of Pisa 
and Jordanus Nemorarius, did so much in arith- 
metic, in the theory of numbers, and in geometry, 



MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 115 

I 

as to work a revolution in mathematics. They 
had great disciples like John of Holy wood (prob- 
ably a town near Dublin), Johannes Campanus 
and others. No wonder that at the end of the 
century Roger Bacon said, " For without mathe- 
matics nothing worth knowing in philosophy can 
be obtained," and again, " for he who knows not 
mathematics cannot know any other science; what 
is more, he cannot discover his own ignorance or 
find its proper remedy." The fourteenth and 
fifteenth centuries saw even more important work 
done. Cantor has half a dozen men in the fif- 
teenth century to whom he devotes more than 
twenty-five pages each. How the place of this 
in mediaeval teaching can have escaped the notice 
of those who insist so much on the neglect of 
science during the Middle Ages, is hard to under- 
stand. This alone would convict them of igno- 
rance of what they are talking about. 

The educational genius of the great university 
century, the thirteenth, the man who influenced his 
contemporaries and succeeding generations more 
than any other, was Thomas Aquinas, to whom 
the Church, for his knowledge and goodness, gave 
the title of saint. If any further proof that 
these centuries were interested in science were 
needed, or that the universities in which he was 
the leading light as scholar and professor in the 
thirteenth century, and as the great master to 
whom all looked reverentially after, were de- 
veloping scientific studies, it would be found in 



116 MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

his works. Philosophy is developed scientifically 
in his " Contra Gentes " and theology, scientifi- 
cally in his great " Summa." It is the very aus- 
terity of the scientific qualities of these books 
that have made them forbidding for many modern 
readers, who, therefore, have failed to understand 
the scientific spirit of the time. St. Thomas 
Aquinas, however, was, as I suggested at the be- 
ginning of this, deeply interested in every form 
of information with regard to what we now call 
physical science. He evidently drank in with 
avidity all that had been observed with regard to 
living creatures and, when we come to analyze his 
works with care and read his books with the devo- 
tion of his own students, we find many anticipa- 
tions of what is most modern in our science. 

The indestructibility of matter, matter and 
form, that is the doctrine of the unity of the 
basis of matter, the conservation of energy in the 
sense that the forms of matter change but do not 
disappear, all these were commoni)laces in his 
thought and teaching. I have recently had occa- 
sion to point out how close he came to that 
thought in modern biology which is probably con- 
sidered to be one of our most modern contribu- 
tions to the theory of evolution. It is expressed 
by the formula of Herbert Spencer, " Ontogeny 
recapitulates phylogeny." According to this the 
completed human being repeats in the course of 
its development the history of the race, that is 
to say, the varying phases of foetal development 



MEDL^VAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 117 

in the human embryo, from the single cell in which 
it originates up to the perfect being as it is born 
into the world, retrace the history by which from 
the single-cell being man has gradually developed. 
The whole theory of evolution is supposed by 
many people to be modern, but of course it is not. 
This particular phase of it, however, is thought 
surely to be modern. It is sometimes spoken of 
as the fundamental law of biogeny. In recent 
years serious doubts have been thrown on it, but 
with that we have nothing to do here. 

It is very curious to find, however, that St. 
Thomas, in his teaching with regard to the origin 
and development of the human being, says, almost 
exactly, what the most ardent supporters of this 
so-called fundamental biogenetic law proclaimed 
in recent years. He says that " the higher a form 
is in the scale of being and the farther it is re- 
moved from mere material form, the more inter- 
mediate forms must be passed through before the 
finally perfect form is reached. Therefore, in 
the generation of animal and man — these having 
the most perfect forms — there occur many inter- 
mediate forms in generations and consequently 
destruction, because the generation of one being 
is the destruction of another." St. Thomas does 
not hesitate to draw his conclusions from this doc- 
trine without hesitation. He proclaims that the 
human material is first animated by a vegetative 
soul or principle of life, and then by an animal 
soul and only ultimately, when the matter has 



118 MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

been properly prepared for it, by a rational soul. 
He said: 

" The vegetative soul, therefore, which is first 
in the embryo, while it lives the life of a plant, is 
destroyed, and there succeeds a more perfect soul, 
which is at once nutrient and sentient, and for 
that time the embryo lives the life of an animal: 
upon the destruction of this there succeeds the 
rational soul, infused from without." 

His discussion of the position of the Churcli 
and of faith to science is extremely interesting, 
because here once more he faces a modern prob- 
lem. Aquinas was very sensitive with regard to 
the imposition upon Christians of things which 
supposedly they had to believe on the score of 
faith, though they were really not of faith at all. 
Some of his expressions in this matter are very 
strong and he was especially fond of quoting St. 
Augustine, who was very emphatic on this point. 
One of these typical passages deserves to find a 
place here because, while the word philosophy is 
used, it is evidently science in our modern sense of 
the word that is intended. Augustine talks of what 
the philosophers have said of the heavens or the 
stars and the motion of the sun and moon, mean- 
ing of course the astronomers, who were in the old 
days classed as natural philosophers. This pas- 
sage, then, which contains the opinions of the two 
greatest teachers of the Church in the West may 
well serve as a guide for those who are interested 
in science, and a warning for those who would 



MEDIJ5VAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 119 

obtrude faith too far into scientific questions, and 
thus hmit' investigation and hamper that freedom 
of intellect which is so important for the develop- 
ment of science. St. Thomas said in his introduc- 
tion to the reply to Master John of Vercelli: 

" I have endeavored to reply but with this pro- 
test at the outset, that many of these articles do 
not pertain to the teachings of faith, but rather 
to the dogmas of the philosophers. But it works 
a great injury either to assert or deny as belong- 
ing to sacred doctrine such things as do not bear 
ujDon the doctrine of piety. For Augustine says, 
' When I hear certain Christians ignorant of those 
things (namely, what philosophers have said of the 
heavens, or the stars, or the motion of the sun 
and moon) or misunderstanding them, I look 
with patience upon such men: nor do I see any 
reason to hinder them, when of thee. Lord Creator 
of all things, they do not believe unworthy things, 
if jjerhaps they be ignorant of the structure, and 
condition of corporal creatures. But they are 
a hindrance if they think these things belong to 
the very doctrine of piety; and more, pertina- 
ciously, dare to affirm that of which they are igno- 
rant.' But that they may be the cause of injury 
Augustine shows. ' It is very disgraceful,' he says, 
* and pernicious and especially to be avoided, that 
a Christian speaking of these things as though 
according to Christian teaching should so rave 
that an}^ infidel may hear; so that, as it is said, 
seeing him altogether in the wrong, he may 



120 MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

scarcely contain his mirth. And it is not so hurt- 
ful that one man should be seen to err, as that 
our writers are believed by those who are without 
[the Church] to have such opinions, and to the 
ruin of those whose salvation is our care they are 
scorned and contemned as unlearned.' Whence it 
seems safer to me that those things which philoso- 
phers have commonly held, and are not repugnant 
to our faith, should neither be asserted as dogmas 
of faith, although at times they may be intro- 
duced under the names of the philosophers, nor 
so denied as contrary to the faith, as to give occa- 
sion to the wise of this world of contemning the 
teaching of the faith." 

Is it any wonder that Professor Saintsbury 
of the University of Edinburgh, whose training 
in the old Scotch universities has given him a 
breadth of sympathy not common in our time, and 
whose wide knowledge of the literature of that 
period as well as its philosophy and education, and 
whose training in the discussion of the criticism 
of all time in his " History of Criticism " has 
made his opinion of special value, should have 
sympathetically turned to these old teachers and 
deprecated a little bitterly the modern attitude 
towards them? He said: 

" Yet there has always in generous souls who 
have some tincture of philosophy, subsisted a 
curious kind of sjmipathy and yearning over the 
work of these generations of mainly disinterested 
scholars, who, whatever they were, were thor- 



MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 121 

ough, and whatever they could not do, could 
think. And there have even, in these latter days, 
been some graceless ones who have asked whether 
the science of the nineteenth century, after an 
equal interval, will be of any more positive value — 
whether it will not have even less comparative 
interest than that which appertains to the scholas- 
ticism of the thirteenth." 

I have always considered, however, that the easi- 
est way to show the modern student of science 
how supremely scientific in his temper was St. 
Thomas, is to quote for him the passage from 
that great teacher with regard to the Resurrection. 
In every way, that is typically modern. St. 
Thomas faces the question that after death men's 
bodies decaj^ the material of them is taken up and 
used in many other living beings, so that how can 
we dare to believe that we shall rise again on 
the last day with the same bodies that we now 
have? St. Thomas discusses this knott}^ problem 
straightforwardly and solves it more satisfactorily, 
even for all the knowledge that we have of it now, 
than has ever been done. 

" What does not bar numerical unity in a man 
while he lives on uninterruptedly clearly can be 
no bar to the identity of the arisen man with the 
man that was. In a man's body while he lives 
there are not only the same parts in respect of 
matter, but also in respect of species. In respect 
of matter there is a flux and reflux of parts. Still 
that fact does not bar the man's numerical unity 



122 MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

from the beginning to the end of his hfe. The 
form and species of the several parts continue 
throughout Hfe, but the matter of the parts is dis- 
solved by the natural heat, and new matter ac- 
crues through nourishment. Yet the man is not 
numerically different by the difference of his 
component parts at different ages, although it is 
true that the material composition of the man at 
one stage of his life is not his material composi- 
tion at another. Addition is made from without 
to the stature of a boy without prejudice to his 
identity, for the boy and the adult are numerically 
the same man." 

The most important feature of the scientific 
teachings of the mediaeval universities has been left 
till the last because it is the clinching confirma- 
tion of a claim that these were essentially scientific 
universities. It is to be found in the position of 
the medical schools and the state of medical teach- 
ing during the Middle Ages. So curiously has 
the history of education been written, and, above 
all, of medical education, that to most people this 
would seem to be surely the department of educa- 
tion which would prove just the opposite. We 
have heard so much about Church opposition 
to anatomy and Church opposition to sur- 
gery, of its repression of the development of 
medical science and even medical art, because the 
Church wanted to make people believe in the 
value of masses, relics and prayers — and pay for 
them — that most people are quite sure that there 



MEBIMYAJ. SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 123 

was no medical education of any significance in 
the Middle Ages. Nothing shows more clearly 
how viciously the history of education has been 
written than the existence of such false impres- 
sions. Not only are they utterly unfounded, but 
they are based on supreme ignorance of one of 
the greatest periods in the history of medicine 
that we have in all the world's history. Not only 
were the schools excellent and the teaching pro- 
gressive, but there was a fine development of 
medical science and, above all, of surgery. Sur- 
gery is supposed to be particularly the depart- 
ment of medicine that did not develop. We 
have learned better in recent years, and now we 
know that there was no greater period in the 
history of surgery than that from 1200 to 1400 
when, alas! following so-called history, we used 
to think there was no surgery. 

The first question that any one who knows any- 
thing about the subject asks with regard to the 
progress in medicine of a particular time or coun- 
try is, what was the standard of its medical edu- 
cation? What was the standard of admission to 
the medical schools, how many years of medical 
studies were required? To this question the Mid- 
dle Ages have a wonderful answer that has not 
been realized until recent years. We now have 
Frederick II's famous law for the regulation of 
the practice of medicine and the maintaining of 
standards in medical schools. This law was pro- 
mulgated in the Two Sicilies, the southern part of 



124. MEDIAEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

Italy and Sicily proper. According to it no one 
was allowed to practise medicine who had not 
studied for four years in a recognized university 
and then practised for one year with a physician 
before receiving his license to practise by him- 
self. If he wanted to practise surgery he had to 
spend an additional special year in the study of 
anatomy. The university medical schools were 
graduate schools and did not admit a student 
unless he had completed the undergraduate 
course. 

Of course it may be thought that this was due 
entirely to the great Emperor Frederick, who was 
far ahead of his time and who, therefore, antici- 
pated the progress of medical teaching by many 
centuries. We have, however, many other docu- 
ments which illustrate the state of medical educa- 
tion at this time. The charters of the medical 
schools were granted by the Popes and were very 
explicit in what they required of the new faculties 
in order that standards might be maintained. Pope 
John XXII, for instance, at the beginning of the 
fourteenth century, issued charters for medical 
schools at Perugia and Cahors. He required that 
there should be four years of medical study and 
three years of preliminary work. He went into 
details to secure the maintenance of standards. 
The original faculties of these schools would all 
have to be doctors in medicine from either Paris 
or Bologna, and it must be their duty to estab- 
lish in the new schools the standards of their 



MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 125 

Almas Matres. Examinations were to be conducted 
under oath, men were not to be granted degrees 
unless they deserved them, the votes of professors 
rejecting candidates or graduating them were to 
be under oath-bound secrecy, so as to have them 
absolutely free from personal influence, and every 
precaution was taken to secure the highest pos- 
sible standards. 

It was as a consequence of their direct attach- 
ment to these old mediaeval medical schools that the 
medical schools founded here in America hi the six- 
teenth century at once began with high standards. 
Three j^ears of preliminary work was required and 
four years of medicine. In the United States no 
preliminary requirements were demanded; and for 
a full century only two years of medical study, 
which really consisted of but two terms of four 
months each, was the requirement. The old 
mediaeval medical schools were originally at- 
tached to the universities, and it is a well-known 
rule in the history of education that whenever 
the medical schools are independent then stand- 
ards are sure to be low. Whenever the univer- 
sity controls the medical school and it is a real 
graduate department, then standards of admission 
and of graduation are properly maintained. It is 
surprising to think that the old mediaeval uni- 
versities should be able to give us lessons in this 
matter and should put us to shame for our slip- 
shod nineteenth-century medical education in the 
United States, but this is a simple fact. Contrast 



126 MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

the South American countries where the mediasval 
traditions with which they were founded con- 
strained them to give four, five and even six years 
to medicine before granting a degree. Go a step 
further and see how devoted to science were the 
Universities of Lima (Peru) and Mexico, cen- 
turies before we did any serious scientific work 
in the United States, and all because they were 
direct descendants of the old mediaeval univer- 
sities. 

The feeling of certain modern educators would 
be that it did not matter how much time these 
mediaeval universities gave to medicine since, 
after all, they had nothing of any value to teach 
in medicine. Even educated people have been led 
to believe that there was nothing in medicine and, 
above all, in the surgery of those times to be of 
any value. Probably no opinion is more foolishly 
ignorant or more ridiculously absurd than this, 
though it is a commonplace among people who 
are sure they know something about history, and, 
above all, among those who consider themselves 
authorities in the history of education, and of the 
development of science. In surgery a magnificent 
development was made at this time of which I shall 
have something to say later. In medicine there 
was much less anticipation of our modern prog- 
ress, but even here there was much that demands 
our respect. One of the university men, Simon 
of Genoa, worked out the dosage of opium and 
indicated its uses. Anodyne drugs were em- 



MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 127 

ployed much more generally and successfully than 
we are apt to think ; various methods of ansesthesia, 
one of them by inhalation, of which I shall say 
more when talking of surgery, were invented and 
a large number of drugs and simples were ex- 
perimented with. Down at Montpellier Bernard 
Gordon suggested red light for smallpox. 

This is not much of a record, perhaps, but we 
must not forget what Professor Richet, the Di- 
rector of the Physiological Laboratory of the 
University of Paris, said not long since in an 
article on " Physicians and Medicine " in La 
Revue de Deuce Mondes. It is startling but 
chasteningly true. " The therapeutics of any 
generation has always been quite absurd to the 
second succeeding generation." Indeed it is one 
of the almost disheartening things in the history 
of medicine to see how treatments come in, are 
widely accepted and hailed as great advances in 
therapeutics and then gradually* disappear. They 
bled a great deal and they purged not a little, 
in accordance with the teaching in the medical 
schools of the universities of the thirteenth and 
fourteenth centuries, but then they bled a great 
deal and purged a great deal more, according to 
the teaching of the medical schools of the begin- 
ning of the nineteenth century. There have been 
many periods in the interval when purging and 
bleeding were, and very properly, not nearly so 
popular. 

It was in preventive medicine particularly that 



128 MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

these progressive medical men of the early uni- 
versity days secured their triumphs. They made 
separate hospitals for the lepers all over Europe, 
and by segregation succeeded in wiping out that 
disease, though it was as widely spread as tuber- 
culosis in our day and presented just as serious 
a problem. Indeed the most encouraging in- 
centive for our present tuberculosis campaign is 
drawn by many authorities from the experience 
with leprosy, which was eventually obliterated as 
an endemic popular disease, by strict segregation 
methods. These same generations created spe- 
cial hospitals for erysipelas and thus prevented 
the spread of this disease in the ordinary hospitals, 
where it used to be so serious a factor foi' morbid- 
ity if not for mortality. Men forgot this later 
and the disease became a serious problem once 
more in all the hospitals of even a generation ago. 
The hospital organization worked out by these 
university men is the finest jewel in the crown 
of their accomplishment as applied scientists. 
Pope Innocent III, himself a University of Paris 
man, founded the Santo Spirito Hospital in Rome, 
summoning for that purpose the best authority 
on hospitals in Europe, Guy of Montpellier, and 
then required the bishops of the world to erect 
similar hosj^itals in their dioceses. This was done, 
and it is Virchow, whose sympathies were any- 
thing but favorable to the Popes, who has been 
most loud in his praise of the wonderful hospital 
organization of these centuries. Every town in 



MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 129 

Europe of 5,000 inhabitants or more had a hos- 
pital, and there were hospitals in many of the 
smaller towns. 

It would be easy to think that these hospitals 
were rudely built, were badly ventilated, were 
ill-arranged and, above all, were likely to be 
houses for the perpetuation of disease rather 
than for the regaining of health. We are prone 
to think that we are the first generation to solve 
the problem of hospital construction. We know 
what poorly-constructed, badly-planned institu- 
tions were the hospitals of three generations ago. 
What, then, must have been the hosj^ital build- 
ings of centuries ago? This argument has no 
place in history; the worst hospitals in the world 
and in history were erected at the end of the 
eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth 
century. Some of the best hospitals ever con- 
structed date from the thirteenth, fourteenth 
and fifteenth centuries.. This was a time when 
great architects were successfully solving the 
construction problems for cathedrals, municipal 
buildings, colleges and the like, and they solved 
them quite as successfully for hospitals. ' Some of 
these hospitals were models in their way. One of 
them, built toward the end of the thirteenth cen- 
tury, by the sister of St. Louis, Marguerite of 
Bourgogne, with its large windows high in the 
walls, in single-story buildings, with arrange- 
ments for the segregation of patients, with the 
kitchens in a separate building, with beautiful 



130 MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

frescoes on the walls so that patients' minds 
might be occupied and not left to their own often 
disturbing devices as with our bare wall, with a 
stream of running water divided so as to pass on 
both sides of the hospital, is a model of con- 
struction for all time. 

It was in surgery rather than medicine, how- 
ever, that these great medigeval university medi- 
cal schools left their impress upon the history of 
medicine. During the thirteenth, fourteenth 
and fifteenth centuries we have a series of won- 
derful teachers of surgery, whose achievements 
we know not by tradition nor by fragments of 
their writings, but by the text-books which they 
wrote and which constituted the teaching for 
generations and sometimes for centuries after 
their time. Gurlt, the great German historian 
of surgery, devotes some 300 pages of the first 
volume of his " History of Surgery " to the 
surgical accomplishments of the JNIiddle Ages. 
He even protests that space compels him to ab- 
breviate the story of what these old-time masters 
of surgery did to lay the foundation of modern 
surgical practices. It is a commonplace in the 
American writing of history that there was no 
surgery at this time. President White says that, 
" for over a thousand years surgery was consid- 
ered dishonorable until the German Emperor 
Wenceslas, in 1405, ordered that it should be 
held in honor again." The two centuries imme- 
diately preceding this date represent the great- 



MEDIAEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 131 

est period in the history of surgery down to our 
own time, and because of its originahty probably 
greater in real achievement than even our vaunted 
age. 

It is sometimes the custom to say that this sur- 
gery was derived from the Arabs. This is sup- 
posed to rob the mediaeval universities of any 
prestige that may come to them for this marvel- 
lous progress. Gurlt, however, in his " History 
of Surgery," in his sketch of Roger (Ruggiero), 
who was the first of the great surgeons of the thir- 
teenth century, who taught at the Italian univer- 
sities, says: " Though Arabian writings on sur- 
gery had been brought over to Italy by Con- 
stantine Africanus 100 years before Roger's time, 
these exercised no influence over Italian surgery in 
the next century, and there is not a trace of the 
influence of the Arabs to be found in Roger's 
work." When Gurlt says this it is because he has 
deliberately studied the question, and we can be 
absolutely sure, therefore, that whatever we find 
in surgerj^ at this time comes to us from these 
great mediaeval universities themselves, and is not 
imported from abroad. 

After Roger, who was at Bologna for a time 
after having been in Paris, and w^ho then became 
a Papal physician, there are a series of great 
names that deserve to be mentioned. Four 
names are connected together by association as 
master and pupil for what may be termed four 
generations of surgical progress. From the birth 



132 MEDIAEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

of the first to the death of the last represents 
about 100 years. That 100 years is a gloriously 
fruitful century in the history of surger3^ The 
first of the group is William of Salicet, of whom 
Professor Clifford Allbutt, the Regius Professor 
of Physic at the University of Cambridge, in 
his address on the " Historical Relations of Medi- 
cine and Surgery to the End of the Sixteenth 
Century," delivered by special invitation at the 
Congress of Arts and Sciences at the World's 
Fair in St. Louis in 1904, has the highest praise. 
Allbutt says: "Like Lanfranc and the other great 
surgeons of the Italian tradition, and unlike 
Franco and Pare, William had the advantage 
of the liberal university education of Italy; but 
like Pare and Wurtz, he had a large practical ex- 
perience in hospitals and on the battlefield and 
fully recognized that surgery cannot be learned 
from books only." Allbutt praises him and 
rightly for his careful notes of cases and then tells 
us something of his accomplishments in surgery. 
He says: " Wilham discovered that dropsy may 
be due to a durities renum six centuries before 
Bright; he substituted the knife for the Arabist 
abuse of the cautery ; he investigated the causes of 
the failure of healing hy first intention (Italics 
ours), he described the danger of wounds of the 
neck; he sutured divided nerves; he forwarded the 
diagnosis of suppurative diseases of the hip; and 
he referred chancre and phagedaena to their 
proper causes." 



MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 133 

His pupil Lanf ranc equalled his master in devo- 
tion to practical surgery and surpassed him in his 
development of the great science of medicine. 
Pagel, the well-known German historian of medi- 
cine, says that, in his text-hook Lanfranc has ex- 
cellent chapters on the affections of the eyes, the 
ears and mouth, the nose, even the teeth, and treats 
of hernia in a very practical common-sense way. 
He warns against the radical operation and says, 
in words that come home to us with strange fa- 
miliarity at the present time, that many surgeons 
decide on operations too easily, not for the sake 
of the patient but for the sake of the money that 
is in them. Lanfranc's discussion of cystotomy, 
Pagel characterizes as prudent but rational, for he 
considers that the operations should not be feared 
too much but not delayed too long. In patients 
suffering from the inconvenience which comes 
from large quantities of fluid in the abdomen he 
advises paracentesis abdominis, but warns against 
putting the patient in danger from such an opera- 
tion without due consideration. Pagel says that 
Lanfranc must be considered as one of the great- 
est surgeons of the JNIiddle Ages and the real 
establisher of the prestige of the French school of 
surgery which maintained its prominence down to 
the nineteenth century 

Lanfranc had been invited to Paris to take the 
chair of surgerj^ because the authorities of the 
university wanted to add prestige to the medical 
school, which was not as well known as the school 



134 MEDIAEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

of philosophy. The fame of William of Salicet 
had spread throughout academic Europe, and so 
Lanfranc was offered the chair at the University 
of Paris in order to carry his master's message 
there. The next in the succession of great teach- 
ers at Paris was Mondeville, who found less to 
do in an original way than his master Lan- 
franc and his protomaster William, but who ac- 
complished much for surgery. All that he did 
was thrown into the shade by what was accom- 
plished for succeeding generations by the next in 
the series, Guy de Chauhac, who studied for a 
time in Paris under Mondeville, though his early 
medical education was obtained at -Montpellier, but 
had also had the advantage of spending a year in 
Italy at the various medical schools which were 
famous at that time. These two incidents, Lan- 
franc's invitation to Paris to be a teacher there 
from Italy more than a thousand miles away, and 
Guy de Chauliac's studies in all the important 
universities of Europe of the time before he took 
up his own work, illustrate better than any words 
of ours can the ardent enthusiasin for study, the 
thoroughgoing anticipation of our most modern 
methods in education. Mondeville, like Chauliac, 
had made very nearly the same round of the 
universities. It is a custom, not a chance inci- 
dent, that we have to deal with here. 

Guy de Chauliac has been given the name of the 
father of modern surgery. Any one who wants to 
see why should read the text-book on surgery that 



MEDI/EVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 135 

Chauliac wrote and which for two centuries after 
his time (he died about the middle of the four- 
teenth century) continued to be the most used 
text-book of surgery in the medical schools of 
Europe. Chauliac, for instance, describes the 
treatment of conditions within all three of the 
important cavities of the body, the skull, the 
thorax and the abdomen. Pagel has three closely- 
printed pages in small type of titles alone of sub- 
jects in surgery which Chauliac treated with dis- 
tinction. His description of instruments and 
methods of operation is especially full and sug- 
gestive. He describes the passage of a catheter, 
for instance, with the accuracy and complete 
technique of a man who knew the difficulties of it 
in complicated cases from practical experience. 
He even recognizes the dangers for the patient 
from the presence of anatomical anomalies of 
various kinds and describes certain of the more im- 
portant of them. He has very exact indications 
for trephining. For empyema he advises opening 
of the chest and indicates where and how. He 
says very frankly that in wounds of the abdomen 
the patient will die if the intestines have been 
perforated and left untreated, and he describes a 
method of suturing wounds of the intestines in 
order to save the patient's life. 

His treatment of bone surgery and of fractures 
and dislocations is especially interesting and 
shows how far these very practical men had 
reached conclusions resembling those of our time. 



136 MEDIAEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

It was in hernia particularly that Chauliac's sur- 
gical genius manifested itself. He operated for 
hernia and its radical cure, placing the patient in 
an exaggerated Trendelenberg position, head down, 
feet fastened to a slanting board. For such work 
anatomy had to be known very well, and Chauliac 
had made special studies at Bologna under Ber- 
truccio, the successor of Mondino. Chauliac once 
declared that the surgeon ignorant of anatomy 
carves the human body as a blind man would 
carve wood. Of ulcers of all kinds Chauliac 
writes from a knowledge evidently derived from 
experience. Of ulcers due to cancer he has much 
to say. He considers them hopeless unless they 
can be excised at a very early stage and the in- 
cision followed by caustics. For carcinomatous 
ulcers there is not much that we can do beyond 
this, even in our day. It is no wonder that the 
great historians of medicine have, been unanimous 
in praise of this wonderful scientific genius. For 
my lecture on " Old-Time Medical Education," 
before the Johns Hopkins Historical Club, last 
year, I quoted some of those opinions. Portal, 
for instance, says of him, " It may be averred 
that Guy de Chauliac said nearly everything that 
modern surgeons say and that his work is of in- 
finite price, but unfortunately too little pon- 
dered." Malgaigne declares Chauliac's " Chir- 
urgia Magna," " A masterpiece of learned and 
luminous writing." Pagel says, " Chauliac rep- 
resents the summit of attainment in mediaeval 



MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 137 

surgery, and he laid the foundation of that pri- 
macy in surgery which the French maintained 
down to the nineteenth century." Professor Chf- 
ford Allbutt says of Chauliac's treatise, " This 
great work I have studied carefully and not with- 
out prejudice; yet I cannot wonder that Fallopius 
compared the author with Hippocrates or that 
John Freind calls him the prince of surgeons. 
The book is rich, aphoristic, orderly and precise." 
In a word it has all the qualities that are usually 
said to be lacking in the work of mediaeval scien- 
tists, and it is a standing reproach to those who 
ignorantly have made so little of the work of 
these wonderful men of the olden time, who an- 
ticipated so many of the features of our modern 
medicine and surgery that we are prone to think 
of as representing climaxes in human progress, 
indications of a wonderful human evolution. 

Two other names of great professors of surgery 
deserve to be mentioned because they make it 
very clear that this wonderful development of sur- 
gery was not confined to France and Italy, but 
made itself felt all over Europe. One of these is 
John Ypermann, a surgeon of the early four- 
teenth century, of whom almost nothing was 
known until about twenty-five years ago, when 
the Belgian historian, Broeck, brought to light 
his works and gathered some details of his life. 
He was a pupil of Lanfranc, and at the end of 
the thirteenth century studied at Paris on a 
scholarship voted by his native town of Ypres, 



138 MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

which provided maintenance and tuition fees for 
him at the great French university expressly in 
order that he might become expert in surgery. 
We are Hkely to think of Ypres as an unimpor- 
tant town, but it was one of the great industrial 
centres of Europe and one of the most populous, 
busy towns of Flanders in the Middle Ages, noted 
for its manufacture of linens and fine laces. The 
famous Cloth Hall, erected in the thirteenth cen- 
tury, one of the most beautiful architectural monu- 
ments in Europe, and one of the finest buildings 
of its kind in the world, was the result of the 
same spirit that sent Ypermann to Paris. 

After his return Ypermann settled down in his 
native town and obtained great renown not only 
at home, so that in that part of the country an 
expert surgeon is still spoken of as an Ypermann, 
but he became famous throughout all the Teu- 
tonic countries. He is the author of two books 
in Flemish. One of these is on medicine. Paget 
calls it an unimportant compilation. The terms 
that occur in it, however, are enough to show us 
how much more than we are likely to think, these 
old masters in medicine discussed problems that 
are still puzzling us. He treats of dropsy, rheu- 
matism, under which occur the terms coryza and 
catarrh, icterus, phthisis (he calls the tuberculous 
tysiken), apoplexy, epilepsy, frenzy, lethargy, 
fallen palate, cough, shortness of breath, lung 
abscess, hemorrhage, blood-spitting, liver abscess, 
hardening of the spleen, affections of the kidney, 



MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 139 

bloody urine, diabetes, incoMtinence of urine, 
dysuria, strangury, gonorrhea and involuntary 
seminal emissions — all these terms are quoted di- 
rectly from Pagel. 

His work in medicine, however, is as nothing 
compared to his writings on surgery. A special 
feature of his book is the presence of seventy 
illustrations of instruments of the most various 
kinds, together with a plate showing the anatomical 
features of the stitching of a wound in the head. 
Even Pagel's brief account of its contents will 
be a source of never-ending surprise for those who 
think that surgery has developed entirely in our 
time. Even in this work on surgery, however, 
there are many things that we now treat under 
medicine. As this gives us an opportunity to 
show how much more of medicine was known at 
this time than is usually thought, I venture to 
quote some of Pagel's brief resume of the contents 
of a single chapter. This is a chapter devoted 
to intoxications, which includes the effect of can- 
tharides as well as alcohol, and treats of the bites 
of snakes, scorpions and of the fatal effects of 
wounds due to the bite of mad dogs. 

The other great surgeon and surgical writer of 
the time, for there must have been many dis- 
tinguished surgeons and only a few writers, if 
we can trust to common experience in that mat- 
ter, was John Ardern, an English surgeon. He 
was educated in JNIontpellier, practised for a time 
in France, then settled for some years in the 



140 MEDIAEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

small town of Newark in Nottinghamshire, and 
then for nearly thirty years in London. His 
" Practice of Surgery," as yet existing only in 
manuscript, is another one of these wonderful con- 
tributions to the applied sciences of anatomy and 
medicine at a time when such applications are often 
supposed to have been absent. He was an expert 
operator and had a wide reputation for his suc- 
cess in the treatment of diseases of the rectum. 
He was the inventor of a new clyster apparatus. 
Daremberg, the medical historian, who saw a 
copy of Ardern's manuscript in St. John's Col- 
lege, Oxford, says that it contained numerous 
illustrations of instruments and operations. We 
fortunately possess an excellent manuscript copy 
in the Surgeon General's Library at Washington, 
and sometime it is hoped this will be edited and 
published. 

The most interesting feature of the work of all 
of these men is their dependence on personal ob- 
servation and not on authority. Guy de Chau- 
liac's position in this matter can be very well ap- 
preciated from his criticism of John of Gaddes- 
den's book in which he bewails the blind following 
of those who had gone before. His bitterest 
reproach for many of his predecessors was that, 
" They followed one another like cranes, whether 
for fear or love he would not say." Pagel praises 
Ypermann for the well-marked striving which he 
has noted in him to free himself from the bondage 
of authority, and because most of his therapeutic 



MEDIAEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 141 

descriptions rest upon his own experience. Wil- 
liam of Salicet, at the beginning of this great 
period of surgery, had insisted that notes of cases 
were the most valuable sources of wisdom in 
medicine and surgery. The last of them, Ardern, 
gave statistics of his cases and was quite as proud 
as any modern surgeon of the large number that 
he had operated on. He gives these carefully 
and accurately. 

I have dwelt on the medical side of these uni- 
versities mainly, of course, because this is more 
familiar to me as a historian of medicine than 
their work in other scientific departments, but also 
to a great extent because the medical schools 
gathered unto themselves nearly all the scientific 
knowledge of the time. Botany, mineralogy, 
climatology, meteorology were all studied for the 
sake of what could be learned from them for the 
benefit of medicine. Even astronomy which was 
then the old astrology, was cultivated seriously, 
because of the supposed effect of the stars on 
human constitutions. For this we surely cannot 
blame these mediaeval students of science since 
four centuries later Galileo and even Kepler 
were still making horoscopes for their patrons and 
laying down laws from astronomy that were sup- 
posed to be applicable to medicine. Even Coper- 
nicus studied astronomy and medicine side by side 
and this combination of studies was not at all 
infrequent. 

The medical schools, then, are the real index of 



14a MEDIAEVAL SCIENTIP^IC UNIVERSITIES 

the serious interest of the mediseval universities 
in science. Our scientific departments in modern 
universities have developed other interests, because 
of various apphcations that these have to hfe and 
its concerns. Always in scientific universities ap- 
plied science is sure to encroach upon the domain 
of pure science, and no one knows that better than 
we do, for we have been bewailing the presence 
of machine shops and boiler factories on the uni- 
versity grounds. The old universities did not 
teach applied mechanics or engineering, but that 
does not mean that these subjects were not taught. 
There were special technical schools conducted by 
the gilds by means of apprenticeship and the 
journeyman training, which enabled them to teach 
those who cared to have it all the knowledge 
necessary for construction work of various kinds. 
The wonderful architectural engineering ex- 
hibited in the cathedrals, university buildings, town 
halls and castles of this time, and the magnificent 
bridges, some of which are still in existence, show 
us that the technical subjects were by no means 
neglected.* Our mediaeval forefathers in educa- 
tion had the wisdom not to let the technical sub- 
jects interfere with pure science too much, as they 
inevitably do whenever the two are brought too 
closely together. Culture is always overshadowed 
by the practical, but not to the ultimate benefit of 
the race. 

The proof for us here in America, close at 

* See Address on " Ideal Education of the Masses." 



MEDIAEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 143 

hand, that these universities of the Middle Ages 
were thoroughly scientific in spirit and not only 
capable of, but actually active and successful in 
scientific investigation, is to be found in our 
earliest American universities. We are prone to 
think, because of the curiously defective way in 
which our histories of education have been written, 
that the only things worth while talking about in 
the origins of education here in America are to 
be found in English America. Recent investiga- 
tions have shown how utterly deceived we were 
by foolish self-conceit in this matter. Long be- 
fore the English-American universities were 
founded, and still longer before they began to do 
any serious work in education, there were im- 
portant universities having literally thousands of 
students in attendance in the Spanish-American 
countries. The University of Mexico and the 
University of Lima in Peru were both founded 
about the middle of the sixteenth century. Har- 
vard came nearly a century later, Yale a full 
century and a half, Princeton more than two 
centuries. The contrast between our English- 
American institutions of learning, however, and 
their Spanish- American rivals in accomplishment 
and numbers in attendance is still more striking 
than the mere dates of foundation. 

Of course there were chairs of many sciences, 
strange as that may seem to us with our ridiculous 
traditions with regard to the history of educa- 
tion. These Spanish- American universities were 



144 MEDIyEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

the direct descendants of the old mediseval uni- 
versities. They were in close relationship with 
Salamanca, Valladolid and Alcala. They were 
the progeny of scientific universities and they 
were, of course, occupied mainly with science. In 
spite of the fact that already the influence of 
the Renaissance, with its classical studies as the 
basis of education, had begun to make itself felt, 
these Spanish- American universities retained, to a 
great extent, the scientific curriculum. Nor must 
it be thought that they were shilly-shally insti- 
tutions of learning, doing nothing in reality, but 
making a great i^retence of studying many things. 
To know the very opposite we turn to Bourne, 
himself at the time a professor at Yale, and writ- 
ing one of the volumes of a series edited by Pro- 
fessor Albert Bushnell Hart, who holds the chair 
of history at Harvard, to be told in very definite 
emphatic terms how successfully investigations in 
science and scientific education were carried on in 
Mexico. Professor Bourne says: 

" Not all the institutions of learning founded 
in Mexico in the sixteenth century can be enum^er- 
ated here, but it is not too much to say that in 
number, range of studies and standard of attain- 
ments by the officers they surpassed anything ex- 
isting in English America until the nineteenth 
century. Mexican scholars made distinguished 
achievements in some branches of science, par- 
ticularly medicine and surgery, hut pre-eminently 
linguistics, history and anthropology. Diction- 



MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 145 

aries and grammars of the native languages and 
histories of the JNlexican institutions are an im- 
posing j3roof of their scholarly devotion and in- 
tellectual activity. Conspicuous are Toribio de 
Motolinia's ' Historia de las Indias de Nueva 
Espaiia,' Duran's ' Historia de las Indias de 
Nueva Espafia,' but most important of all Saha- 
gun's great work on Mexican life and religion." 
The scientific products of these universities in 
America are interesting because almost as a rule 
we know absolutely nothing about them in Eng- 
lish America, and, therefore, conclude there must 
have been none. The first book written on a 
medical topic in America was the " Secretos de 
Chirurgia," written by Dr. Pedrarias de Bena- 
vides, which was published at Valladolid in Spain 
in loG7. The first book on medicine actually pub- 
lished in this country was " Opera INIedicinalia," 
by Francisco Bravo.* On Columbus' second ex- 
pedition, however, a Dr. Chan^a who had been 
physician-in-ordinary to the King and Queen of 
Spain, was sent with the expedition as what we 
would now call a scientific attache. On his return 
he wrote a volume of scientific observations that 
he had made in America. Some of these were 
doubtless written while he was over here, though 
the book was published in Spain. Dr. Ybarra of 
New York recently published a resume of this in 
the Smithsonian Publications and an article on 
it in the Journal of the American Medical Asso- 

* Published in Mexico, 1570. 



146 MEDI.^VAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

ciation. It shows very well how wide were the 
scientific interests of the j^hysicians of the time 
and how ardent their investigation of science, for 
there is scarcely a phase of modern science that 
would be touched on by the corps of scientists 
now attached to such an expedition which does not 
receive some serious treatment in Dr. Chan^a's 
book. Thus early did the Spanish-Americans 
take up scientific investigation seriously. 

Professor Bourne of Yale, in his chapter on 
the " Transmission of the European Culture," 
in the third volume of the American Nation 
Series,* says (p. 17) : " Early in the eighteenth 
century the Lima University [Lima, Peru] 
counted nearly 2,000 students and numbered about 
one hundred and eighty doctors [in its faculty] in 
theology, civil and canon law, medicine and the 
arts. Ulloa reports that ' the university makes a 
stately appearance from without, and its inside 
is decorated with suitable ornaments.' There were 
chairs of all the sciences, and ' some of the pro- 
fessors have, notwithstanding the vast distance, 
gained the applause of the literati of Europe.' 
The coming of the Jesuits contributed much to 
the real educational work in America. They es- 
tablished colleges, one of which, the little Jesuit 
College at Juli, on Lake Titicaca, became a seat 
of genuine learning." 

A distinguished professor of medicine in this 
country to whose attention this state of medical 

* Harpers, New York, 1908. 



MBDIMYAl. SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 147 

education in the Spanish-American countries, so 
different from what is thought, was called, said: 
" What a surprise it is to find that while we have 
been accustomed to think that the primum mobile 
[the active initiative] in education in this country 
came from the Anglo-Saxons, we now find that 
they were long anticipated in every department 
of education by the Spaniards, though we have 
been rather accustomed to despise them for their 
backwardness." With regard to the establishment 
of the first American medical school, it is no 
longer a surprise to find that it was established 
in Mexico, just as soon as we realize that the 
Mexican University was closely in touch with the 
traditions of the mediaeval universities generally 
and thesa all established medical schools as uni- 
versity departments. The standards of these 
mediaeval medical schools were transported to 
America and maintained. Our medical schools in 
the United States got away from the universities, 
became mere preparatory institutions, granted de- 
grees for just as little study as possible, two 
terms of four months each in most cases, some- 
times given in the same calendar year and re- 
quiring no preliminary training. We are reform- 
ing this now for a generation, but just inasmuch 
as we are, far from advancing, we are going 
straight back to the medieval universities and 
their standards and methods. 

With all this evidence before us it seems per- 
fectly clear that these old mediaeval universities 



148 MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

must be considered to have been scientific univer- 
sities in our fullest modern sense of the term. 
They devoted all their time to the study of 
phenomena around them and the attempt to find 
the principles underlying them. They went at it 
somewhat differently in many departments of 
science than those which are now employed, but in 
all their practical work at least, they anticipated 
our methods as well as many of our results. The 
great professors wrote text-books and students 
who were ardent in the pursuit of knowledge 
copied out those text-books by hand. They had 
no way of easily multiplying them almost in- 
definitely, as we have at the present time. Prob- 
ably nothing shows so well the enthusiastic zeal 
of these times in the pursuit of scientific knowl- 
edge as the fact that so many copies of these text- 
books still remain for us. Much has been lost by 
war and fire, and still more by wanton destruc- 
tion by people who could not understand, for there 
were many intervening generations that sold these 
old manuscripts by the ton for the use of grocers 
to wrap up butter and any other conmiodity. If 
we only had the wealth of manuscript that was 
originally created it would be easy to fill in the 
gaps in our knowledge, and show the wonderful 
scientific scholarship of these mediaeval univer- 
sities. 

As it is, there cannot be the slightest doubt 
that these were great scientific universities. How, 
then, has the opposite tradition of science only 



MEDIEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 149 

coming to cultivation in our time obtained a foot- 
hold ; above all, how has it happened that men have 
insisted that there was no science in these old 
days because the Church was opposed to science 
and would not permit its study or allow of scien- 
tific investigation? If we were to believe many 
writers who have been taken very seriously, 
anatomy was conducted only under the pain of 
death, chemistry made one liable to all sorts of 
penalties and other forms of science were abso- 
lutely banned. There is no reason at all for any 
such declarations from what we know of the his- 
tory of science. The place where such groundless 
assertions are found is in the so-called historj^ of 
religion. The odium theologicum was very bitter, 
and ignorant men said things without knowing, 
and then their statements were copied by others 
who knew even less. 

Probably there is no more serious blot on the 
history of education and, above all, the history of 
science, than the fact that men supposed to be 
scholarly have been so ready to accept absolutely 
ignorant statements with regard to the state of 
science during the INIiddle Ages. It would be 
amusing, if it were not so amazing, to recall the 
utter lack of scholarship that characterized the 
men who wrote such things, but above all the 
generations that accepted such history as solemn 
truth and even conferred academic dignities and 
degrees on such men. Take a book like Dr. 
Draper's " Conflict of Science and Religion." It 



150 MEDIAEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

is founded on the uttermost lack of knowledge of 
the subjects of which he speaks. It is true that 
he has consulted historical writers. They were all 
secondary authorities. He had never gone back 
to look up a single original document of any kind. 
He was a physician; supposedly at least, then, 
he should know the history of medicine. He 
knows nothing at all about the great medical 
schools of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; 
of the great period of surgery that occurred at 
this time he has no inkling. Had he cared really 
to know anything about the period he could have 
seen some of the text-books written by these men. 
Instead we have an exhibition, in his book, of the 
most consummate assumption of knowledge asso- 
ciated with sublime ignorance and bitter con- 
demnation for old institutions, educational and 
ecclesiastical, in matters of which he knows noth- 
ing, though if he did know, his opinion would 
surely be just the opposite to that he has ex- 
pressed. 

To a great degree this is true of President 
White's " A History of the Warfare of Science 
with Theology." Secondary authorities con- 
stantly figure in it, and they are quoted from, 
as a rule, with the definite idea of proving a par- 
ticular thesis— that theology is opposed to science. 
Of course it is very different to that of Draper, 
there is much more of true scholarship in it, but 
it is sad to think that the prestige of a president 
of a great university who had been a professor of 



MEDIyEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 151 

history should have been lent to statements so 
egregiously misleading as those which are con- 
stantly to be found in his work. Even sadder it is 
to think that this has been accepted by many 
people as a scholarly work and as representing the 
last word on the subject. 

The " Cambridge Modern History " in its pref- 
ace said, that history has been a long conspiracy 
against the truth and that we must now go back 
once more to the original documents. " It has 
become impossible," the editors declare, " for the 
liistorical writers of the present age to trust with- 
out reserve even to the most respected secondary 
authorities. The honest student continually finds 
himself deserted, retarded, misled, by the classics 
of historical literature, and has to hew his own 
way through multitudinous transactions, periodi- 
cals and official publications in order to reach the 
truth." In no department of history is this 
expression more true than in that of education, 
and especially of science and the relation of edu- 
cational institutions to scientific development. No 
man should now dare venture to say anything 
about the state of science at any time in the 
world's history who has not seen some of the books 
written at that time. Above all, no one should 
venture to make little of the past on the strength 
of what religiously prejudiced writers have said 
about it. 

This story of the mediaeval universities is most 
illuminating from that standpoint. They were 



152 MEDIAEVAL SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSITIES 

scientific universities closely resembling our own. 
It has become the custom to talk of them as if 
they were institutions of learning that accom- 
j)lished nothing, and wasted their time over trifles. 
We often hear of how much time was wasted in 
dialectics in the Middle-Age universities, but 
surely it was not more than is wasted over tech- 
nics in our modern university. Hundreds of 
books were written about the quips and quiddities 
of logic, but thousands of volumes are full of 
technics and most of our scientific journals are 
crowded with it. Let us, then, if for no other 
reason than our fraternity with them, begin to 
do justice to these old universities. Their scholars 
were ardent and zealous, their professors were 
enthusiastic and laborious. The tomes they issued 
were larger and their writings more voluminous 
than those of our own professors. They are hard 
reading, but no one must dare to criticise them 
unless he has read them, and, above all, no one 
must make little of them without knowing some- 
thing about them at first hand. This is scholar- 
ship; the secondary information that has been 
popular is sciolism. Let us get back to scholar- 
ship. That is what we need just now in America. 



IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 



" According to my view he who would be good at any- 
thing must practise that thing from his youth upwards, 
both in sport and earnest, in the particular way which 
the work requires : for example, he who is to be a good 
builder, should play at building children's houses; and 
he who is to be a good husbandman at tilling the ground; 
those who have the care of their education should provide 
them when young with mimic tools. And they should 
learn beforehand the knowledge which they will after- 
wards require for their art. For example, the future car- 
penter should learn to measure or apply the line in play; 
and the future warrior should learn riding or some other 
exercise for amusement, and the teacher should endeavor to 
direct the children's inclinations and pleasures by the help 
of amusements to their final aim in life. The sum of edu- 
cation is right training in the nursery. The soul of the 
child in his play should be trained to that sort of excel- 
lence in which, when he grows up to manhood, he will 
have to be perfected. Do you agree with me thus 
far.?"— Plato, Laws (Jowett), Vol. IV, p. 173. Scrib- 
ner, 1902. 

" There will be gymnasia and schools in the midst of 
the city, and outside the city circuses (playgrounds) and 
open spaces for riding places and archery. In all of these 
there should be instructors of the young." — Plato, Laws 
(Jowett), Vol. IV, p. 82. Scribner, 1902. 



IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION * 

We have come to realize in recent years that in 
many ways our education of the masses is a 
failure. Teaching people to read and write and 
occupying them with books till they are fifteen 
years of age, when all that they will use their 
power to read for is to devote themselves to three 
or four editions of the daily paper and the huge, 
overgrown Sunday papers on their only day of 
leisure, with perhaps occasional recourse to a 
cheap magazine or a cheaper novel, in order to 
kill time, as they frankly declare, is scarcely worth 
while. Indeed we have even come to realize that 
such education gives opportunity rather for the 
development of discontent than of happiness. 
The learning to write which enables a man to be 
a clerk, or a bookkeeper, the occupations that are, 
as a rule, the least lucrative, that are so full that 
there is no question of organizing them, that con- 
fine men for long hours in dark rooms very often 
and furnish the least possible oj^portunity to rise, 
is of itself not ideal. With some rather discon- 

* The material for this lecture was collected for a course on the 
History of Education delivered to the Sisters of Charity of Mount St. 
Vincent's, at St. Stephen's Hall, New York City, in January and 
February, 1909. The material was subsequently developed for a 
similar set of lectures for the religious teachers in the parochial 
schools of Philadelphia in the spring of 1910. 

155 



156 IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 

nected information this is practically all that our 
ordinary education teaches people, and yet we 
spend eight years and large sums of money on it. 
We are just beginning to realize that other 
forms of education and not these superficial in- 
troductions to supposed scholarship, which can 
mean so little, constitute realities in education. 

We have come to realize that Germany, where 
it is said that more than sixty per cent, of the 
population has its opportunity for some technical 
training, so that men are taught the rudiments of 
a trade or a handicraft or some occupation other 
than that which shall make them mere routine 
servants of some one else, does far better than this. 
By contrast it is remarked that less than one per 
cent, of our children have the opportunity for 
such training. We are very prone to think, how- 
ever, that the technical school is a modern idea. 
We assume that it owes its origin to the develop- 
ment of mankind in the process of evolution to 
a point where the recognition of the value of 
handiwork and craftsmanship has at length arisen. 
Nothing could well be less true than this. It 
is true that the eighteenth century saw practically 
no education of this kind and it was only at the 
end of the nineteenth century that any modern 
nation even began to wake up to the necessity 
for it. In the older times, however, and, above 
all, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, 
there was a magnificent training afforded the 
masses of the people in all sorts of arts and 



IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 157 

crafts and trades and occupations, such as can 
now be obtained only in technical schools. They 
did not call these teaching institutions technical 
schools, but they had all the benefits that we 
would now derive from such schools. 

This training the peojjle of these times owed to 
the gilds. These were, of course, of many forms, 
the Arts Gilds, the Crafts Gilds, the Merchants 
Gilds, and then the various Trades Gilds. Boys 
were apprenticed to men following such an occu- 
pation as the youth had expressed a liking for, 
or that he seemed to be adapted to, or that his 
parents chose for him, and then began his train- 
ing. It was conducted for five or six years usu- 
ally in the house of the master or tradesman to 
whom he was apprenticed. The master provided 
him with board and clothes, at least, after the 
first year, and he gradually trained him in the 
trade or craft or industry, whatever it might be. 
After his apprenticeship was over the young man 
of eighteen or so became a journeyman work- 
man and usually wandered from his native town 
to other places, sometimes going even over seas 
in order to learn the foreign secrets of his craft 
or art or trade, and after three years of this, when 
ready to settle down, presented evidence as to 
his accomplishments, and if this was accepted 
he became a master in his gild. If he were a 
craftsman or an artisan he made a lock or a bolt 
or some more artistic piece of work in the metals 
base or precious, and if this sample was con- 



158 IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 

sidered worthy of them by his fellow-gildsmen 
he was admitted as a master in the gild. This 
was the highest rank of workman, and the men 
who held it were supposed to be able to do any- 
thing that had been done by fellow-workmen up 
to that time. The piece that he presented was 
then called a masterpiece, and it is from this 
that our good old English word masterpiece was 
derived. 

This might seem a veiy inadequate training, 
and 23erhaps apj^eal to many as not deserving of 
the name of technical training or schooling. The 
only way to decide as to that, however, is to 
appreciate the products turned out by these 
workmen. It was these graduates of the ap- 
prentice-journeyman system of technical training 
who produced the great series of marvellous art 
objects which adorn the English cathedrals, the 
English municipal buildings, the castles and the 
palaces and the monasteries of the thirteenth cen- 
tury. It was the graduates of these schools, or at 
least of this method of schooling, who produced 
the wonderful stained glass, the beautiful bells, 
the finished ironwork, the surpassing woodwork, 
the sculpture, the decoration,— in a word, all the 
artistic details of the architecture of the wonder- 
ful Gothic periods of the thirteenth and four- 
teenth centuries, — which we have learned to value 
so highly in recent years. If we wanted to pro- 
duce such work in our large cities now, we would 
have to import the workmen. These wonderful 



IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 159 

products were made in cities so small that we 
would be apt to think them scarcely more than 
insignificant towns in our time. No town in 
England during the thirteenth century, with the 
possible exception of London, had more than 
25,000, and most of the cathedral towns were 
under 15,000 in population and many of them had 
less than 10,000. 

The extent to which this teaching went and how 
much it partook of the nature of real technical 
training can be veiy well appreciated from recent 
studies of these early times. There has prob- 
ably never been more beautiful handicraftsman- 
ship nor better products of what we now call the 
arts and crafts than during the thirteenth and 
fourteenth centuries, when this system of educat- 
ing the masses became thoroughly organized. 
Any one who knows the details of the decora- 
tion of the great Gothic cathedrals or of the 
monasteries and castles and municipal buildings 
of these centuries will be well acquainted with 
these marvels of accomplishment, scattered every- 
where throughout England, France, Germany, 
Italy and Spain in this period. Something of 
the story of it all I tried to tell, as far as the 
cathedrals are concerned, in my book, " The Thir- 
teenth the Greatest of Centuries." Those who 
care to see another side of it will find it in 
Mr. A. Ralph Adams Cram's " The Ruined 
Abbeys of Great Britain."* Mr. Cram, himself a 

* New York, The Churchman Company, 1905. 



160 IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 

successful modern architect, does not hesitate to 
declare some of this work as among the most 
beautiful that ever was made, even including the 
ancient Greek and Roman productions. In his 
searches into the ruins of these old abbeys he has 
found mutilated fragments so consummate in their 
faultless art that they deserve a place with the 
masterpieces of sculpture of every age. 

It was not alone, however, in the arts of sculp- 
ture and decoration, that is in those finer accom- 
plishments that would occupy only a few of the 
workmen, but in every detail of adornment that 
these artistic craftsmen excelled. The locks and 
bolts, the latches and hinges, the grilles, even the 
very fences and gates made in wrought iron, are 
beautiful in every line and in the artistic efficiency 
of their designs. The carved woodwork is in 
many places a marvel. When a gate has to be 
moved, or a hinge is no longer used, or a lock or 
even a key from these early times goes out of 
commission, we would consider it almost a sac- 
rilege to throw it away; it is transported to the 
museum — not alone because of its value as an 
antique but, as a rule, also because of its charm 
as a work of art. When a bench-end is no longer 
needed it, too, finds its way into the museum. 
As Rev. Augustus Jessopp has shown very clearly 
in his studies of the old English parishes, these 
marvels of iron and woodwork were made, in 
most cases, respectively by the village blacksmith 
and the village carpenter. In the archives of 



IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 161 

some of the parishes of the Middle Ages the ac- 
counts are found showing that these men were 
paid for them. When the village blacksmith and 
the village carpenter becomes the artist artisan* 
capable of producing such good work, then in- 
deed is there an ideal education at work and a 
technical training that may be boasted of. 

The most important feature of this education 
remains to be spoken of, however. It consisted 
of' the fine development and occupation of the 
mind that came from this system. Men found 
happiness in their work. In a population of less 
than 3,000,000 of people many thousands of 
workmen, engaged in building these magnificent 
monuments of that old time, reaped a blessed 
pleasure in the doing of beautiful things. They, 
too, had a share in the great monument of which 
their town was worthily proud and the opportu- 
nity to make something worth while for it. In- 
stead of idly envying others they devoted them- 
selves to making whatever their contribution 
might be as beautiful as possible. It might be 
only the hinges for the doors br the latch for the 
gates, it might be only the stonework for the 
bases of pillars, though it might be the beautiful 
decoration of their capitals; but everything was 
being done beautifully and an artist hand was 
required everywhere. Men must have tried over 
and over again to make such fine things. They 
were not done at haphazard nor at one trial. 
There must have been many a spoiled piece re- 



162 IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 

jected, not so much by the foreman as by the 
critical, educated taste of the workmen themselves 
who were able to make such beautiful things. 
iMen who could make such artistic products must 
have labored much and begun over and over 
again. This must have made the finest occupa- 
tion of mind that a great mass of people has ever 
had in all the world's history. 

American millionaires model the gates of their 
parks and the grille doors of their palaces under 
the wise direction of modern architects who fortu- 
nately know enough to follow the designs created 
by these village workmen of the olden time. 
Modern palatial residences are glad to have sam- 
ples of the wood-carving of the thirteenth and 
fourteenth centuries as models for their decora- 
tion, and as attractive pieces around which pres- 
ent-day work may be done. We have to import our 
workmen, even our large cities cannot supply all 
that we want of them, and yet little towns of a few 
thousand inhabitants had them in sufficient abun- 
dance in the olden time to enable them to make 
every portion of their great monumental buildings, 
cathedrals, abbeys, universities, castles and town 
halls beautiful in every way. This represents 
the triumph of a technical training afforded by 
the gilds of workmen of the olden time. We have 
to insist on this because our present generation 
has been so sure that ours was the first genera- 
tion that gave any serious attention to the educa- 
tion of the masses, that it is important to show by 



IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 163 

contrast how much of a mistake we have made and 
how well an older generation accomplished its 
purpose. 

The chapter of the " Lost Arts " might well be 
told with regard to this old time. They had 
secrets in glass-making which were the tradition 
of the teaching of particular gilds that we have 
been unable to find again in the modern time. 
There is a jewel-like lustre to their colors that is 
sometimes simply marvellous in its depth and 
purity. At Lincoln the contrast between old 
and new glass can be seen very well. The old 
windows of the thirteenth century time were 
stoned out by the Parliamentarians when they 
captured the town, because forsooth they could 
have no such idolatry as that in their presence. 
The old sexton, who as man and boy for over sixty 
years had lived his life under the beautiful tints 
of the old glass, now saw it scattered upon the 
floor in fragments. He could not part with it 
thus and so he gathered it up into bags, broken 
to pieces though it was, and hid it away in the 
crypt. In the nineteenth century when they were 
restoring the cathedral they found these frag- 
ments of the old windows. They pieced them 
together and they proved to be so beautiful that, 
though they could not fit them as they were in 
the olden time, at least they succeeded in making 
a beautiful patchwork of colored glass. 

Over on the other side of Lincoln Cathedral 
they then placed some new windows of the mod- 



164 IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 

ern time. These were made in France, I believe. 
They were made about the middle of the nine- 
teenth century, when stained-glass making was al- 
most at its lowest ebb. They were considered to 
be very beautiful, however, and something like 
£20,000 sterling was paid for them. The con- 
trast between the two sets of windows is very 
striking. The old windows are so beautiful, the 
new ones are so commonplace. The visitor, even 
though he knows nothing about art, notices the 
contrast and, if he has an eye for color, views with 
something of a shock this attempt of the nine- 
teenth century to do something that had been so 
well done by the gild-trained workmen of the 
technical schools of the Middle Ages. Though 
they are represented here only by patched frag- 
ments of their work he can scarcely repress a 
smile at the effect of their work in cheapening 
the modern. Everywhere it is the same way. 
Mr. F. Rolfe, writing from Venice, where he has 
been studying thirteenth-century glass, and talk- 
ing of its wonderful beauty as compared to any- 
thing modern, says: " There are also fragments 
of two windows, pieced together and the missing 
parts filled in with the best which modern Murano 
can do. These shoAv the celebrated Beroviero 
Ruby Glass (secret lost) of marvellous depth and 
brilliancy in comparison with which the modern 
work is merelj^ watery. (The ancient is just like 
a decanter of port wine.)" 

This is the story, no matter where one goes, 



IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 165 

throughout Europe. At York they would not 
surrender the town to the Parhamentary army 
until a guarantee had been given them that their 
cathedral would not be devastated as had been the 
case elsewhere. Besides General Ireton was a 
friend of the Yorkists and he was ready to agree 
to the stipulation. The agreement was not fully 
carried out, fanatic soldiers could not be entirely 
restrained, but some of the old glass remains. 
There is probably nothing more beautiful in all 
the realm of artistic glass-making than the fa- 
mous Five Sisters window at York. In France 
the Revolution repeated what the Puritans ac- 
complished of ruin in England. Notre Dame has 
no trace of its old glass. In some of the cathe- 
drals, however, there has fortunately been pre- 
served for us enough of it to know how wonder- 
fully the makers of it must have been trained, 
and to let us realize how much of experiment, of 
investigation, of study that we would now call 
applied chemistry must have gone to the making 
of this wonderful old glass. These technical 
schools were not merely passing on arts and crafts 
traditions, but each generation was adding to the 
secrets of the gilds b}" original research of its 
own. We are prone to think that such work of 
original investigation was reserved for our time, 
but that is only because of the foolish self-com- 
placency which blinds us to what other genera- 
tions did. 

The stained glass of the cathedrals of Bourges 



166 IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 

and of Chartres shows the marvellous success of 
these old workers in glass and their power to make 
enduring products. It is a mystery to see how 
their blues have lasted w^iile the sun has shone 
through them all these years and caused no de- 
terioration or only such as softens and adds to 
beauty but not really causes to fade. Blue had 
to be used in great profusion on the windows be- 
cause the symbolism of color was well determined 
and blue stood for the virtue of purity and was 
the Blessed Virgin's color. It had to come in, 
therefore, on nearly all occasions. Usually by 
irradiation blue causes surrounding colors to lose 
something of their tint, and by contrast often 
spoils what would ordinaril}^ be expected to prove 
beautiful color effects. These old workmen had 
found the secret of using it in such a way as not 
thus to spoil surrounding colors, not to permit 
it to be too assertive, yet we have wonderful en- 
during blues that have come down to us prac- 
tically unchanged through all these centuries. 
Where the workmen of the old time set them- 
selves producing pure color effects, their windows 
look like jewels and coruscate in the light of the 
setting sun — for their most charming effects were 
particularly obtained in the west windows — with a 
glorious beauty that has appealed to every gen- 
eration since. 

It was not alone in the building trades, how- 
ever, that these fine things w^ere accomplished. 
Bookmaking reached a degree of perfection that 



IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 167 

has never been excelled. Humphreys, the author- 
ity on illuminated books, declares that the manu- 
script volumes of the thirteenth century, illumi- 
nated as they are by the patient labor and the 
finety developed taste of this time, are the most 
beautiful ever made. We have one example of 
the thirteenth-century illuminated book in the 
Lenox Library in New York for which, I be- 
lieve, the museum authorities were quite willing 
to pay some $18,000, and it is worth much more 
than that now, for it is a wondrously beautiful 
exami^le of the illuminations of the time. Like 
the glassmakers, these bookmakers had secrets 
that have been lost, and that we with all our 
knowledge of science and of art in the modern 
time, or at least our fondly complacent notion 
of our knowledge of art and science, are unable 
to find the formulas for. They used blues in 
their illuminating work that have never faded, 
though blues are so prone to fade on parchment. 
They managed their blues in wonderful way and 
they still are as fresh and as undisturbing of the 
harmony of other colors as in the long ago. They 
could burnish gold and it stays as bright as when 
it was first applied to the leaves, even after seven 
centuries. We have lost the art of burnishing 
gold in such applied work and ours becomes dull 
after a time. 

Nor was this teaching of technics confined only 
to the men. From this period we have the most 
beautiful needlework in the world. The famous 



168 IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 

Cope of Ascoli has recently attracted wide atten- 
tion. Mr. Pierpont Morgan purchased it and was 
wilhng to pay $60,000 for it, though the jewels 
that had been on it originally had been removed. 
His experts assured him that it was the most 
beautiful piece of needlework in the world. After- 
wards it was found to have been stolen, and so he 
restored it to the Italian Government, who did not 
return it to the little convent of Ascoli in North 
Central Italy, from which it had been stolen and 
where it was made at the end of the thirteenth 
century (1284). Elsewhere in Europe they were 
doing just as charming work with the needle. In 
fact England, not Italy, was the acknowledged 
home of it. The English Cope of Cyon is an- 
other notable example of needlework from this 
time. Thirteenth-century work with the needle is 
famous in the history of the art. It was the 
product of just the same forces that gave us the 
wonderful stained glass. They, too, used colors 
and applied great art principles to this unpromis- 
ing mode of expression and accomplished great 
results. I have had the privilege of seeing the 
copy of the Cope of Ascoli that was made while 
in Mr. Morgan's possession, and, like the stained 
glass of York or Bourges or Chartres, it is one 
of the things not likely ever to be forgotten, so 
beautiful a realization is it of what is best in 
taste and art. 

The supremely interesting feature of this popu- 
lar education was its effect upon the lives, and 



IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 169 

minds, and happiness of the workmen. Men got 
up to their work in the morning not as to a routine 
occupation in which they did the same things over 
and over again, until they were so tired that they 
could scarcely do them any more, and then came 
home to rest from fatigue in weariness of mind 
and of body. But they awoke from sound sleep 
with the memory that ideas had been coming to 
them the day before, and especially towards even- 
ing that, now with fresh bodies, they might be able 
to execute better, and that it would surely be a 
pleasure to work out. They came to their work 
with an artist's spirit, hopeful that they would 
be able to express in the material what they saw 
so clearly with their mind's eye. It was tiresome 
working but the hours were not long, and always 
there was the thought of accomplishment worthy 
of the cathedral or the abbey or the town hall, 
worthy to be placed beside the masterpieces in 
the best sense of that dear old word, that their 
fellow-workmen of the other gilds were accom- 
plishing around them. They went to bed healthily 
tired but not weary, sometimes to dream of their 
work, not as a nightmare, but as something 
that represented possibilities of accomplishment. 
When technical schools can lift men up to this 
plane then, indeed, there is a chance for happiness 
even for the workmen. 

Compare with this for a moment the lot of 
the modern workman. He goes out in the morn- 
ing to work that seldom is interesting, that he 



170 IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 

practically never cares to do only that he must get 
money enough to support himself and his family, 
and that requires the frequent repetition of routine 
movements until he is weary, body and soul. 
He must work or starve. He has very little in- 
terest in it as a rule, often none at all, and some- 
times he is thoroughh^ disgusted with it. He must 
earn money enough to get bread to live to-day 
so that he shall be able to go and work again to- 
morrow. And so the humdrum round from day 
to day with nothing to relieve the prospect until 
the darkness comes when no man can work. As 
to dreams of accomplishment or pleasure in his 
work, as the artist has, there is practically none. 
He needs must go on, and that is all about it. Is 
it any wonder that this breeds discontent? 

Happy is the man who has found his work. 
There is only one happiness in this little life of 
ours and that consists in having work to do that 
one cares to do, and the chance to do it in such 
order and with such rewards as make life rea- 
sonably 2^1e^sant, satisfying from the material 
side. There are no pleasures in life equal to the 
joy of the worker in his work when he cares for 
it. Pleasures are at most but passing incidents. 
The work is what counts. These workmen of the 
Middle Ages taught in the technical schools of 
that olden time had chances for happiness, chances 
that were well taken, such as perhaps no other 
generation of workmen could have. 

Of course it may be said that, after all, there 



IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 171 

were only opportunities for a few to work at the 
great architectural monuments of the thirteenth 
and fourteenth centuries. In a sense this is true, 
but it must not be forgotten that without modern 
mechanical means and with the slow, patient la- 
borious effort required to raise these huge edi- 
fices, much time and many men were required. 
Besides the cathedrals and the abbeys there were 
many private castles and town halls,, and then in 
many places the homes of the gilds themselves, 
some of which, as, for instance, the famous hall of 
the clothmakers at Ypres, are among the most 
beautiful monuments of the architecture of that 
period. In everything, however, the workmen 
had a chance to do beautiful work. In the textile 
industries this is the time when some of the most 
beautiful cloth ever made was invented and 
brought to perfection. Linen was woven with 
wonderful skill, satin was invented and brought 
to perfection, silk brocades of marvellous designs 
of many kinds were made, threads of gold and 
silver were introduced into the textures, wonder- 
fully fine effects were studied out and applied in 
the industries, and just as in the decorative arts 
so in the arts of cloth-weaving and of many other 
forms of human endeavor, there was an artistic 
craftsmanship such as we have lost sight of to a 
great extent in our age of machinery. 

The Irish poet, Yeats, in bidding a group of 
American friends good-bye some five years ago, 
said that we had many opportunities for culture 



172 IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 

in life here in America, but we must be careful 
to take them fully and not deceive ourselves with 
counterfeits, or we would surely miss something of 
the precious privilege and development that might 
be ours. Among other things he said, that we 
must not forget " that until the very utensils in 
the kitchen are useful as well as beautiful no 
nation can think of itself as really cultured." If 
men and women can bear without constraint to 
handle things that are merely useful without 
beauty in them, there is something seriously lack- 
ing in their culture. Whatever is merely useful 
is hideous. Nature never made anything that was 
merely useful in all the world's history. The 
things of nature around us are all wonderful 
utilities and yet charmingly beautiful. The pretty 
flowers are seed envelopes meant to attract birds 
and insects, so that the seeds may be scattered. 
The beautiful fruits are other seed envelopes 
meant to attract man and the animals, so that the 
seeds may be carried far and wide. The leaves of 
trees are eminently useful as lungs and stomach 
and yet are beautiful and have a wondrous variety 
and a charm all their own. 

This precious lesson of nature they seem to 
have understood well in the INIiddle Ages and 
applied it with marvellous perfection. It has 
often been called to attention that portions of 
Gothic edifices in dark corners, out of the sight of 
the ordinary visitor, are just as beautifully deco- 
rated in their own way as those which are esj^e- 



IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 173 

cially on exhibition. The gravestones in their 
churches, though meant to be trodden under foot 
and often covered by the dirt from the shoes of 
passersby, yet had bronze ornaments that are so 
beautiful that in the modern time artists take 
rubbings of them so as to carry the designs away 
with them. While every portion of the church 
is beautiful, the same thing was true in the castles 
and to a great extent in their own homes. The 
furniture of that time, even in the houses of 
smaller tradesmen, was beautiful in its simplicity, 
its solidity, its charm of line, and then, above all, 
its absolute rejection of all pretence of seeming 
to be anything other than it was. Their drinking 
cups were beautiful, their domestic utensils of 
various kinds had charming lines and, though they 
did not have as many as we have in the modern 
time, what they had were so beautiful that now 
we find them on exhibition in museums, and we 
are beginning to imitate them in order that the 
wealthy may have as bric-a-brac ornaments in 
their houses, the utensils which were in ordinary 
use in the homes of the middle classes of the 
thirteenth century. 

There was a satisfaction for the workman in 
making all these beauteous things. He knew, as 
a rule, for whom they were to be made. He knew 
where they were to be placed. He often saw his 
handiwork afterwards. His reputation depended 
on it. There was a happiness then in doing it 
well, and in taking his time to it, that surpasses 



174< IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 

any idle pleasure away from his work, as happi- 
ness always surpasses pleasure. There was the 
joy of the doing, and joys we are coming to 
appreciate mean ever so much more than pleas- 
ures. What we want at the present time are 
more joys and less pleasures. How many men 
and women were blessed in that time because they 
had found their work. That is the only real hap- 
piness in life. How profusely it was scattered 
over the mediaeval world. 

Almost nothing that was made was of a char- 
acter that could be done by mere routine. A man 
had to occupy both mind and body in the making 
of the textiles, of the kitchen utensils, of the furni- 
ture, of the various metal utensils required for 
houses, and so for nearly everything else. It is 
the workman who has mere routine work that has 
opportunity to think about other things and 
brood over his lot and grow more and more dis- 
satisfied. It is the man who does not have to 
give his mind to what he is doing, but who while 
his body grows more and more tired accomplishing 
a Hmited set of constantly repeated movements, 
may allow his mind to ponder gloomily over his 
condition, compare it with that of others and 
grow envious, who has the worst possible seeds 
of discontent in his occupation. 

Men who did this sort of work that required 
active mental attention, learned to think for them- 
selves. When they had moments of leisure, not 
having newspai)ers and suj)erficial shallow books 



IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 175 

to waste their time on, they did some thinking. 
Any one who has had a httle intimate contact 
with the old-fashioned artisans, the shoemakers, 
the harnessmakers, the cabinetmakers who work 
at benches, the woodcarvers, men who have real 
trades, knows how often one finds among them a 
deep, serious thinker with regard to the problems 
of life around. They do not drink in other peo- 
ple's opinions and then think that they are think- 
ing, because they are able to rej)eat some formulas 
of words. Such men are not easily led. They 
make good jurymen, they have logic; above all, 
they are thoughtful. There must have been much 
of this in the old time among the handicraftsmen 
of the Middle Ages. It is doubtless to this that 
we owe the fact that these men were gradually 
organized in many wonderful ways into the basic 
democracy on which the liberties of the English- 
speaking people of the world are founded. We 
shall have much more to say of this in treating 
of the wonderful fraternal organizations, with 
solutions for nearly every problem of social need, 
which these men succeeded in working out for 
themselves in times considered to have been be- 
nighted. 

There was another phase of the education of 
these members of the gilds that is even more 
interesting because it trenches particularly on the 
intellectual side of life, the provision of entertain- 
ment and solves an important social problem. 
This was the organization of dramatic perform- 



176 IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 

ances for the people in which the members of the 
gilds took part. The stories of the Old Testa- 
ment and of the New, and of the lives of the 
Saints, and of various incidents connected with 
Church history, were worked up into plays and 
were presented in the various cities. We have 
the remains of many cycles of these plays. They 
represent the beginnings of our modern dramatic 
literature. They were simple and very naive, but 
they were interesting and they concerned some 
of the deepest and most beautiful thoughts with 
which man has ever been concerned. The mem- 
bers of the gilds and their families took part in 
them. The principal sets of plays were given in 
the springtime at the various festivals of the 
Church, so frequent then. Most of the spare 
time from Christmas on, especially the long hours 
of the winter evenings, were occupied in prepara- 
tions of various kinds for these spring dramatic 
performances. It is impossible to conceive of 
anything more likely to give people innocent 
and joyful yet absorbing occupations of mind 
than these preparations. 

Some of the young men and women were chosen 
as the actors and had to learn their parts and be 
rehearsing them. Choruses had to be trained, cos- 
tumes had to be made, some scenery had to be 
arranged, everything was done by the members 
of the particular gild for each special portion of 
the cycle of the play assigned to them. Garments 
had actually to be manufactured out of the wool, 



IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 177 

the dyeing of them had to be managed, spangles 
had to be made for them, there must have been 
busy occupation of the most interesting kind for 
many hands. Of course it is easy to say that 
these naive productions could not have meant 
very much for the people. Any one who thinks 
so, however, has had no experience with private 
theatricals, and above all has never had the op- 
portunity to see how much they mean for the 
occupation of young folks' minds and the keep- 
ing of them out of mischief during the winter 
months when they are much indoors. When the 
Jesuits founded their great schools in Europe 
they laid it down as one of the rules of the insti- 
tute to be observed in all their schools, that plays 
in certain number should be given every year, 
partly for the sake of the educational effect of 
such occupation with dramatic literature, but 
mainly because of the interest aroused by them 
and the occupation of mind for young folks which 
they involve. 

As to how much they may mean, perhaps the 
best way for those of our day to realize it is to 
take the example of Oberammergau with its 
great Passion Play still given. Here we have a 
typical instance of a Passion play of the olden 
time maintaining itself. The preparations for it 
occupy the villagers in their mountain home not 
for months only, but for years before it is given. 
It represents the centre of the village life, is the 
main portion of its activities. The place of a 



178 IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 

family with regard to the play constitutes its 
position in the village aristocracy. Something of 
this must have been true in the gilds of the Middle 
Ages in these dramatic performances. Just as 
at Oberammergau nearly every one of the villa- 
gers has something to do or is in some way con- 
nected with the preparation of the play, so most 
of the members of the particular gilds and prob- 
ably their families had some connection with their 
plays. The children had their interest and curi- 
osity aroused and were allowed to help in their 
measure, and then when the glorious day of the 
performance came, there must have been joy in 
the hearts of all and rejoicing over its success. 
This is the sort of occupation of mind that we 
would like to be able to provide for our people 
in the cities and towns, but circumstances are such 
that we cannot. 

Those who would think that these old Passion 
and mystery plays meant very little for the peo- 
ple who did not take part in them and, above all, 
very little for the spectators, in an educational 
way, forget entirely that this side of the work of 
the old plays can also be studied at Oberam- 
mergau. This little town of 1,400 inhabitants 
occupies itself for years to such good effect that, 
when the performances are given crowds flock 
from all over the world to witness them. When 
I was there in 1900 I think that I saw the most 
cosmopolitan gathering that I had ever been in, 
though I have been to several International Medi- 



IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 179 

cal Congresses. There were Russians and Poles, 
and Scandinavians and Americans and Austra- 
lians, and there stayed in the house with us a 
little party from Buenos Ayres, and our seat 
companions in the train were English, who had 
been born in India, and they pointed out to 
us some South Africans who had come to see the 
Passion Play. This village of 1,400 inhabitants 
succeeds in producing actors who are capable of 
arousing thus the interest of the world, and they 
have artistic taste enough to mount it well, and 
they manage their performances in thoroughly 
dignified fashion, and yet in many ways they have 
the simplicity and, above all, the dear old simple 
faith of the mediaeval people from whom they 
come. This is the best possible evidence that we 
could have of the place of the old plays in the 
life of the people. 

We have another form of evidence that is ex- 
tremely interesting. Out of these old mystery 
plays, dramas of the Nativity and of the Passion 
with the introductions and interludes to these cen- 
tral facts of creation, there developed first the 
morality plays and then the drama of the modern 
time. Twice in the history of the world, each time 
quite independent of the other, the drama has 
originated anew out of religious ceremonials. In 
old Greece this is the origin of the drama; in the 
Middle Ages exactly the same thing happened. 
Nor was this origin unworthy in any way of the 
great development that came. Some of the old 



180 IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 

mystery plays were written with wonderful dra- 
matic insight and with a capacity to bring out 
dramatic moments that is very admirable. As for 
the morality plays we have had one of them re- 
peated to us in recent years, " Everyman," and 
well it has served to show how able was the genius 
of these old dramatic writers. People of the mod- 
ern sordid time listened for two hours enraptured 
and then went away, paying the tribute of silence 
to this wonderful arrangement of the ideas con- 
nected with such a familiar theme as the four last 
things to be remembered — death, judgment, 
heaven and hell. Fine as is " Everyman," there 
are some critics who think the " Castle of Per- 
severance," written about the same time, the lat- 
ter part of the fifteenth century, an even greater 
play. 

The most important feature of this work in 
dramatics of the old gilds was not the entertain- 
ment, though with what we know of how low 
entertainment can sink and how much it can mean 
for degradation, surely that would be sufficient, 
but the fact that all of the workmen and their 
families in the towns were occupied with the high 
thoughts and the beautiful phrases and the up- 
lifting motives and the deep significance of the 
Bible stories. These are so simple that no one 
could fail to understand. They are written so 
close to the heart of human nature that even the 
simplest child can appreciate their meaning. They 
are full of the most precious lessons, yet without 



IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 181 

any of that moralizing that is often so sterile and 
so characteristic of what we call mere preaching. 
All the townspeople were occupied for months 
beforehand with these stories. They got ever 
closer and closer to the heart of the mystery in 
them. They got closer thus to the heart of the 
mystery of life. They were made to feel the 
presence of the Creator and of Providence while 
occupying themselves with thoughts that are the 
essence of deepest poetry. What would one not 
give to be able to occupy a great number of peo- 
ple, for many hours every winter, with such 
thoughts, not alone for their moral effect but their 
real educational value. They did not add useless 
information to useless information, but they did 
bring development of mind and, above all, heart. 
In my book " The Thirteenth the Greatest of 
Centuries," * I tell the story of how the various 
trades gilds in the towns divided these phases of 
the mystery plays among themselves. Every one 
had an opportunity to do something. They were 
the tanners and the plasterers, the cardmakers 
and the fullers, the coopers, the armorers, the 
gaunters and glovers, the shipwrights, the pess- 
ners, fishmongers and mariners, the parchment- 
makers and bookbinders, the hosiers, the spicers, 
the pewterers and founders, the tylers and smiths, 
the chandlers, the orfevers, the goldsmiths, the 
goldbeaters, the money-makers, and then many 
other trades whose names sound curious to us of 

* Catholic Summer School Press, New York, 1907. 



182 IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 

the modern time. The bowyers or makers of 
bows; the fletchers or arrow featherers; the hay- 
resters or workers in horsehair, the bowlers or 
bowlmakers, the feystours, makers of saddle-trees; 
the verrom's, glaciers ; the dubbers, ref urbishers of 
clothes; the luminers or illuminators, the scriven- 
ers or public writers; the drapers, the mercers; 
the lorymers or bridle-makers; the spurriers, 
makers of spurs; the cordwaners; the bladesmiths; 
the curriers; the scalers, and many others, all had 
their chances to take part in these old plays. 

They were not being entertained, but were 
themselves active agents in the doing of things 
for themselves and for others. This is what brings 
real contentment with it. Superficial entertain- 
ment that occupies the surface of the mind for 
the moment means very little for real recreation of 
mind. What men need is to have something that 
makes them think along lines different to those in 
which they are engaged in their dail}^ work. This 
gives real rest. The blood gets away from parts 
of the brain where it has been all day, flows to 
new parts, and recreation is the result. Such 
entertainment, however, must occupy the very 
centre of interest for the moment and not be some- 
thing seen in passing and then forgotten. The 
modern psychotherapeutist would say, that no bet- 
ter amusement than this could possibly be ob- 
tained since it brought real diversion of mind. 
Above all, we of the modern time who know how 
vicious, how immoral in its tendencies, how sug- 



IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 183 

gestive of all that is evil, how familiarizing with 
what is worst in men until familiarity begets con- 
tempt, commercial entertainment in the shape of 
dramatics, so-called at least, may be, cannot help 
but admire and envy and would emulate, if we 
could, this fine solution of a very pressing social 
problem that the gilds found in an educational 
feature that is of surpassing value. 

There are three post-graduate courses in mod- 
ern life that are quite beyond the control of our 
educational authorities, though we talk much of 
our interest and our accomplishments in educa- 
tion. These three have more influence over the 
people than all of our popular education. They 
are the newspaper, the hbrary and the theatre. 
Some of us who know what the library is doing 
are not at all satisfied with it. We are spend- 
ing an immense amount of money mainly to fur- 
nish the cheapest kind of mere superficial amuse- 
ment to the people of our cities. In so doing we 
are probably hurting their power of concentra- 
tion of mind instead of helping it, and it is this 
concentration of mind that is the best fruit of 
education. This is, however, another story. Of 
the newspaper, as we now have it, the less said 
the better. It is bringing our young people 
particularly into intimate contact with many of 
the vicious and brutalizing things of life, the sex 
crimes, brutal murders and prize-fights, so that 
uplift and refinement almost become impossible. 
As for the theatre, no one now thinks of it as 



184 IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 

educationally valuable. Our plays are such super- 
ficial presentations of the life around us that 
once they have had their run no one thinks of 
reviving them. This is the better side of the thea- 
tre. The worst side is absolutely in the hands of 
the powers of evil and is confessedly growing 
worse all the time. 

Besides these indirect educational features the 
gilds encouraged certain formal educational in- 
stitutions that are of great interest, and that have 
been misunderstood for several centuries until 
recent years. In many places they maintained 
grammar schools and these grammar schools were 
eminently successful in helping to make scholars 
of such of the sons of the members of the gilds 
as w^anted to lift themselves above their trades 
into the intellectual life. We know more about 
the grammar school at Stratford-on-Avon than 
of any of the others. The reason for this is that 
we have been interested in the antiquities of 
Shakespeare's town and the conditions which ob- 
tained in it, before as well as during his lifetime. 
The Gild of the Holy Cross of Stratford main- 
tained a grammar school in which many pupils 
were educated. That this was not a singular 
feature of gild work is evident from what we know 
of many other gilds. These gild schools were sup- 
pressed in the reformation time and then later 
had to be replaced by the so-called Edward VI 
grammar schools, in one of which it is usually said 
that Shakespeare was educated. As the English 



IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 185 

historian Gairdner declared not long since in his 
" History of the Pre-Reformation Times in Eng- 
land," Edward has obtained a reputation for 
foundations in charity and in education that he 
by no means deserved. The schools founded by 
him particularly were nothing more than re- 
establishments of popular schools of the olden 
time whose endowment had been confiscated. The 
new foundations were makeshifts to appease popu- 
lar clamor. 

The old gilds did not believe in devoting all 
the early years of children to mere book-learning. 
Some few with special aptitudes for this were 
provided with opportunities. The rest were edu- 
cated in various ways at home until their ap- 
prenticeship to a trade began, and then their real 
education commenced. Our own experience with 
education in the early years from six to eight or 
nine is not particularly favorable. Children who 
enter school a little later than the legal age 
graduate sooner and with even higher marks than 
those who begin at the age of six. This has been 
shown by statistics in England in many cities. 
What is learned with so much fuss and worry 
and bother for the children and the teachers from 
six to eight, is rapidly picked up in a few months 
at the age of eight or nine, and then is better 
assimilated. The grammar schools of the gilds 
took the children about the age of nine or ten and 
then gave them education in letters. That educa- 
tion, by the way, began at six in the morning and, 



186 IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 

with two hours of intervals, continued until four 
in the afternoon. They believed in the eight-hour 
day for children, but they began it good and 
early so that artificial light might not constitute 
a problem. 

The best schooling, however, afforded by the 
gilds, after that in self-help of course, was that 
in mutual aid. We are establishing schools of 
philanthropy in the modern time and we talk 
much about the organization of charity and other 
phases of mutual aid. In this as in everything 
else we map out, as George Eliot once said, our 
ignorance of things, or at least our gropings after 
solutions of problems, in long Greek names, which 
often serve to produce the idea that we know 
ever so much more about these subjects than we 
really do. The training in brotherly love and 
helpfulness in the old gilds was a fine school. 
Those who think that it is only now that ideas 
of mutuality in sharing resj)onsibilities, of co- 
operation and co-ordination of effort for the bene- 
fit of all, of community interests, are new, should 
study Toulmin Smith's work on the gilds, or read 
Brentano on the foreign gilds. There is not a 
phase of our organization of charity in the mod- 
ern time that was not well anticipated by the 
members of the gilds, and that, too, in ways such 
as we cannot even hope to rival unless we change 
the basis on which our helpfulness is founded. 
Theirs was not a stooping down of supposed bet- 
ter, or so-called upper classes, to help the lower, 



IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 187 

but organization among the people to help them- 
selves so that there was in no sense a pauperiza- 
tion. 

Every phase of human need was looked to. 
We are just beginning to realize our obhgations 
to care for the old, and the last twenty years has 
seen various efforts on the part of governments 
to provide old-age pensions. In the Middle 
Ages according to the laws of the gilds the man 
who had paid his dues for seven years would then 
draw a weekly pension equal to something more 
than five dollars now, for all the rest of his life 
if he w^ere disabled by injury, or had become 
incapacitated from old age or illness. Then there 
were gilds to provide insurance against loss by 
fire, loss by robbery on land and also on sea, loss 
by shipwreck, loss even by imprisonment and all 
other phases of human needs. If the workman 
were injured his family nursed him during the 
day but a brother member of the gild, as we 
have said, was sent to care for him at night, and a 
good portion of his wages went on, paid to him 
out of the gild chest. If he died his widow and 
orphans were cared for by a special pension. The 
widow did not have to break up the family and 
send the children to orphan asylums. There were 
practically no orphan asylums. The gilds cared 
for the children of dead members. As the boys 
grew up special attention was given them so as 
to provide a trade for them, and they were given 
earlier opportunities than others to get on in life. 



188 IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 

The orphans were the favorite children of the 
gilds, and instead of a child being handicapped 
by the loss of his parents when he was young, 
it sometimes happened that he got better oppor- 
tunities than if his parents lived. 

These gilds provided opportunities for social 
entertainment and friendly intercourse and for 
such acquaintanceship as would afford mutual 
pleasure and give oj^portunities for the meeting 
of the young folks, — sons and daughters of the 
members of the gild. They had their yearly bene- 
fit at which the wives of the members and their 
sweethearts were supposed by rule to come, and 
then they had other meetings and social gather- 
ings — picnics in the countrj^ in the summer, dances 
in the winter time and all in a circle where every 
one knew every one else, and all went well. 
These are some social features of these gilds edu- 
cational in the highest sense that we can well envy 
in the modern time, when we find it so difficult 
to secure innocent, happy f)leasures for young 
people that will not leave a bad taste in the mouth 
afterwards. When a member of the gild died 
his brother members attended the Mass which was 
said for him and gave a certain amount in charity 
that was meant to be applied for his benefit. The 
whole outlook on life was eminently brotherly. 
There has never been such a teaching of true fra- 
ternity, of the brotherhood of man, of the neces- 
sity for mutual aid and then of such practice of 
it as makes it easy, as among these old gilds. 



IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 189 

The finest result of this teaching is to be seen 
in the democratic spirit that graduallj^ arose as a 
consequence of these gilds and their teaching of 
self-government in all local affairs to the people. 
The gilds were arranged and organized in the 
various parishes. These parishes were independ- 
ent communities for local affairs who had charge 
of the police system, the health, the road-making, 
the path-keeping, the boundary-guarding and, in 
general, the comfort and convenience of the com- 
munity. The gildsmen, more than any others, 
were the factors in these parishes. They accumu- 
lated money for the various purposes and had 
great influence in the development of the com- 
munity life and the solution of local government 
problems. 

It would be very easy to think that the gilds 
could not have fulfilled all these duties and sub- 
served all these needs. If we recall, however, that 
there were 30,000 gilds in England at the end of 
the fifteenth century, when there were not more 
than 4,000,000 of people in the whole country, 
then we can see how much could be accomplished. 
Alas, at the beginning of the next century all 
their moneys were confiscated, and because they 
were Church societies, every one of them requir- 
ing attendance at Church duties and at Mass, as 
well as at the Masses for the dead, but, above all, 
for the crime of having money in their treasuries 
at a time when the King needed money and his 
appetite had been whetted by the spoil of the mon- 



190 IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 

asteries and the churches, the gilds were obhter- 
ated. Only a few of them in London that had 
powerful j)rotectors and that escaped on the plea 
that they were commercial organizations and not 
religious societies, were able to preserve something 
of their old-time integrity. These are now s6 
rich that they are the wonder of those who know 
them. They give us a good idea, however, of the 
deep foundations that had been established out 
of the common chest in the purchase of property 
for these gilds. 

In solving the problems of industrial insurance, 
of providing for the widows and the orphans, of 
securing annuities when they would be needed, 
these gilds set us an example that it would be 
well for us to follow. The insurance money was 
not accumulated in such huge sums that it would 
be a constant temptation for exploitation on the 
part of officials. It was distributed in compara- 
tively small sums in many thousands of treasuries, 
and was under the surveillance of those most in- 
terested in it. The old-age pensions were not 
governmental, issued in large numbers and open 
to inevitable abuses, but were given by those who 
knew, to those whose necessities were well known. 

No wonder that we find democratic govern- 
ment developing co-ordinately with these gilds. 
At the beginning of the thirteenth century ]Magna 
Charta was signed. About the middle of it the 
first English Parliament met, before the end of 
it the proper representation of the cities and 



IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 191 

towns which were mainly controlled by the gilds 
was secured and during the last quarter of it 
the English Common Law came into effect so as 
to secure the rights of all. Bracton's great " Di- 
gest of the English Common Law " was written 
about 1280, and it is still the great sourcebook 
of the principles of law in English-speaking coun- 
tries. In many of the States of our Union the 
Supreme Courts still make their decisions on the 
basis of the English Common Law, and until a 
decade or two ago all of them did. The people's 
rights were secured by the education of the peo- 
ple and the property laws and those for the guard- 
ianship of the person and for the prevention of 
autocratic interference with liberty were all of 
them put into effect as a consequence of this edu- 
cation in democracy. 

This, then, was surely an ideal teaching of the 
masses, a teaching of the arts and crafts, a teach- 
ing of mutual aid, a teaching of true fraternity, a 
teaching of book-learning whenever that was con- 
sidered necessary or advisable, a teaching of the 
rights of man and a wonderful development of 
laws as a consequence, and all of this accom- 
j^lished not by the upper classes, stooping to lift 
the lower classes, but out of the conscious de- 
velopment of the lower classes themselves, so that 
there came a true evolution and not merely a 
superficial influence from without. If we want 
to know how to teach the masses and to help them 
to contentment, happiness, occupation of mind, 



192 IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 

uplifting entertainment, cheerful amusement and, 
above all, to conscious democratic government, 
here is the model of it as it can be found nowhere 
else. I commend it to those who are teaching 
and who, realizing the failure of our modern edu- 
cation in many ways, are looking about for the 
remedies that will help to make our popular edu- 
cation more efficient. 

The soul of this ideal education of the masses 
was the training of character. They had no 
illusions that the mere imparting of information 
would make people better nor that the knowing 
of many things would make them more desirable 
citizens. Probably they did not consciously rea- 
son much about these subjects, but their instincts 
led them straight. JNIr. Edward O. Sisson, writ- 
ing in the Atlantic Monthly for July, 1910, says 
that the final question regarding education is 
whether it avails to produce the type of character 
required by the republic (nation) and the race. 
To accomplish this we need to fit our practice to 
Herbart's great formula that, " the chief business 
of education is the ethical revelation of the uni- 
verse." Take any part of this system of educa- 
tion that I have called the ideal education of the 
masses and try it by that standard and see how 
high its mark will be. Their handiwork is mainly 
an act of devotion to the God of the universe and 
its products are the most beautiful gifts that ever 
were offered to him. Cathedral stonework, glass- 
work, ironwork, beautiful sacred vessels, handsomest 



IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 193 

vestments ever made, needlework, lacework, the 
beautiful setting of the cathedral; what an act 
of worship it all was! When it was finished, it 
belonged to no class but to the whole people. It 
was theirs to be proud of and to worship in. 

Their very amusements were often acts of wor- 
ship. Their plays concerned the revelations of 
God to man, for they were all founded on the 
Bible, and even for those who may not accept 
those revelations as divine the fact that the men 
and M^omen, the masses, the handworkmen and the 
little traders, were for manj^ months in each year 
engaged with the high ethical thoughts that con- 
stitute the greatest contribution to the ethical 
revelation of the universe that we have in litera- 
ture, must of itself be an eminently satisfying 
feature of this old-time education. As regards 
the Creator, these people were constantly made 
familiar with Him, His works and ways. Their 
holidays were holy-days. They were anniversa- 
ries in the life of the God-Man or His chosen 
servants. The men and women whom they cele- 
brated on those days were chosen characters who 
had devoted themselves unselfishl}^ to others, so 
that the after-time hailed them as saints because 
of their forgetfulness of self. We know what this 
constantly recurring reminder of' the lives of great 
men and women may be, and then we must not 
forget that on these days in their great cathedral 
they heard the story of the life of the saint of the 
day, and often a discourse on the qualities that 



194 IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 

stamped him or her as worthy of admiration. 
Let us remember, above all, that there were as 
many women saints as men, and that these were 
held uj) for the admiration and emulation of grow- 
ing youth. This was ethical training at every 
turn in life. 

Above all, there was constant training in that 
thoughtfulness for others that means so much in 
any true system of education. When members of 
the gilds fell ill, their famihes nursed them dur- 
ing the day, but members of the gilds chosen 
for that purpose nursed them at night. It was 
felt that the family did quite enough not to ex- 
haust itself by night watching. When brother 
members of the gild died their fellows attended 
their funeral in a body, and, above all, took part 
in the JNIass for their souls. People who do not 
understand the Catholic idea of Mass for the dead 
will not appreciate this in the way that Catholics 
do, but at least they will understand the brother- 
liness of the act and the beautiful purpose that 
prompted so many to gather, in order that even 
after death they might do whatever they could for 
this departed brother. Besides the death of a 
brother gildsman was the signal for the giving of 
alms because the merit of these alms, it was felt, 
could be transferred to his account, and so the 
bond of fraternity continued even in the life be- 
yond. The ethical effect of all this on the minds 
of people who sincereh^ believed can scarcely be 
exaggerated. Here is a training of the will and 



IDEAL POrULAR EDUCATION 195 

of character, and a teaching of the relationship of 
man to man and of man to the Creator carried 
out into all the smallest details of life. 

Above all, these generations had a training in 
personal service for one another. Every one ex- 
ercised charity. It was not a few of the very 
wealthy who practised philanthropy. They had 
safeguards which, as far as is possible, prevented 
abuse of this charity. The alms, for instance, 
that was given on the occasion of a brother's 
funeral was not distributed hit or miss and all at 
one time, but members of the gild bought from 
the treasurer tokens which might be redeemed in 
bread and meat or in cast-off clothing or in some 
other way. These were distributed to the poor as 
they seemed to need them. If you met a poor 
man who seemed really in want you could give 
him one or more of these tokens and then be 
sure that while he would get whatever was neces- 
sarj^ to supply his absolute needs, he would not be 
able to abuse charit5\ In our time we constantly 
have stories of large accumulations on the part 
of street beggars who own valuable property and 
have accounts in savings banks and the like. 
There was no possibility of this under the medifeval 
system and yet charity was widely exercised, every 
one took some part in it, and there was that train- 
ing, not only in effective pity for affliction, but 
also in helpfulness for others, which means so 
much more than the exercise of occasional charity, 
because, for the moment, one is touched by the 



196 IDEAL POPULAR EDUCATION 

sight of suffering or has remorse because one feels 
that one has been indulging one's self and wants 
the precious satisfaction that will come from a 
little making up for luxurious extravagance. 

In our time, when we have gradually excluded 
moral teaching and training almost entirely from 
our schools and our methods of education, this 
phase of the ideal education of the masses is par- 
ticularly interesting. Milton declared that " the 
main skill and groundwork of education will 
be to temper the pupils with such lectures and 
explanations as will draw them into willing obedi- 
ence, inflamed with the study of learning and 
the admiration of virtue, stirred up with high 
hopes of living to be brave men and worthy 
patriots." Their great stone-books, the cathe- 
drals, where all who came could read the life of 
the Lord, the frequent reminders of the lives of 
the saints, doers among men who forgot them- 
selves and thought of others, the fraternal obliga- 
tions of the gilds and their intercourse with each 
other, all these constituted the essence of an 
education as nearlj^ like that demanded by Milton 
as can well be imagined. It seems far-fetched to 
go back five, six, even seven centuries to find such 
ideals in practice, but the educator who is serious 
and candid with himself will find it easy to dis- 
cover the elements of a wonderful intellectual 
and, above all, moral training of the people, that 
is the whole people from the lowest to the liighest, 
in these early days. 



CYCLES OF FEMININE EDUCATION 
AND INFLUENCE 



" And if I am right nothing can be more foolish than 
our modern fashion of training men and women differ- 
ently, whereby one-half of the power of the city is lost. 
For reflect — if women are not to have the education of 
men some other must be found for them, and what other 
can we propose? " — Plato, Laws (Jowett), p. 82. 
Scribner, 1902. 



CYCLES OF FEMININE EDUCATION 
AND INFLUENCE* 

Nothing is commoner than to suppose that 
what we are doing at the present day is an 
improvement over whatever they were doing at 
any time in the past in the same line. We were 
rather proud during the nineteenth century to 
talk of that century as the century of evolution. 
Evolutionary terms of all kinds found their way 
even into everyday speech and a very general im- 
pression was produced that we are in the midst 
of progress so rapid and unerring, that even from 
decade to decade it is possible to trace the wonder- 
ful advance that man is making. We look back 
on the early nineteenth century as quite hopelessly 
backward. They had no railroads, no street-car 
lines, no public street lighting, no modes of heat- 
ing buildings that gave any comfort in the cold 
weather, no elevators, and w^hen we compare our 
present comfortable condition with the discom- 
forts of that not so distant period, we feel how 
much evolution has done for us, and inevitably 

* The material for this was gathered for a lecture on the Historj' of 
Education delivered for the Academy of the Sacred Heart, Kenwood, 
Albany, N. Y., and St. Joseph's College, Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, 
Pa. Very nearly in its present form the address was delivered before 
the League for the Civic Education of Women, at the Colony Club, 
New York City, in the vvir^ter of 1910. 

199 



200 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

conclude that just as much progress as has been 
made in transportation and in comfort, has also 
been made in the things of the mind, and, above 
all, in education, so that, while the millennium 
is not yet here, it cannot surely be far off; and 
men are attaining at last, with giant strides, the 
great purpose that runs through the ages. 

Probably in nothing is the assumption that we 
are doing something far beyond what was ever 
accomplished before, more emphatically expressed 
than in the ordinary opinions as to what is being 
done by and for women in our generation. We 
have come to think that at last in the course of 
evolution woman is beginning to come into some- 
thing of her rights, she is at last getting her op- 
portunity for the higher education and for pro- 
fessional education so far as she wants it, and as a 
consequence is securing that influence which, as the 
equal of man, she should have in the world. Now 
there is just one thing with regard to this very 
general impression which deserves to be called 
particularly to attention. This is not the first 
time in the world's history, nor the first by many 
times, that woman has had the opportunity for the 
higher education and has taken it very well. 
Neither is it the first time that she has insisted on 
having an influence in public affairs, but on the 
contrary, we can readily find a very curious series 
of cycles of feminine education and of the exer- 
cise of public influence by women, with intervals 
of almost negative phases in these matters that 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 201 

are rather difficult to explain. Let us before try- 
ing to understand what the feministic movement 
means in our own time and, above all, before try- 
ing to sum up its ultimate significance for the 
race, study some of the corresponding movements 
in former times. 

The most interesting phase of the woman move- 
ment in history is that which occurred at the time 
of the Renaissance. Because it is typical of the 
phases of the feministic movement at all times, 
and then, too, because it is closer to us and the 
records of it are more complete, it will be ex- 
tremely interesting to follow out some of the 
details of it. It may be necessary for that to 
make a little excursion into the history of the 
period. During the early fifteenth century the 
Turks were bothering Constantinople so much, 
that Greek scholars, rendered uncomfortable at 
home, began making their way over into Italy 
rather frequently, bringing with them precious 
manuscripts and remains of old Greek art. Be- 
sides commerce aroused by the Crusades was mak- 
ing the intercourse between East and West much 
more intimate than it had been and, as a result, 
a taste for Greek letters and art was beginning 
to be felt in certain portions of Italy. When 
Constantinople fell, about the middle of the fif- 
teenth century, the prestige of the old capital of 
the Greek empire was lost, and scholars abandoned 
it for Italy in large numbers. This is the time 
of the Renaissance. The rebirth that the word 



202 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

signifies, is not a rebirth of art and architecture 
and Hterature into the modern world, as if there 
had been nothing before, for Gothic art and archi- 
tecture and hterature is quite as wonderful, if 
not more so, than anything that came after, and 
there are good authorities who insist that the 
Renaissance hurt, rather than helped, Europe. 
The Renaissance was a rebirth of Greek ideas and 
ideals in aesthetics into the Efuropean world, and 
while we may not agree with Sir Henry Maine 
that whatever lives and moves in the intellectual 
world is Greek in origin, there is no doubt that 
Greek can be the source of most wonderful in- 
centive and such it proved to be during the fif- 
teenth century. 

Men and women began to study Greek and 
they paid much more attention as a consequence 
to the Latin classics modelled on the Greek, and 
so the New Learning, the so-called humanities, 
became the centre of intellectual interest. They* 
were studied first in private schools, but before 
long a place for these new studies was demanded 
in the curriculum of the universities. The uni- 
versities, however, were occupied with the so- 
called seven liberal arts, which were really scien- 
tific studies. There was geometry, astronomy, 
music, grammar, rhetoric, logic and metaphysics, 
with considerable ethics and political science, so 
that they resembled in many ways our modern 
universities as they have been transformed since 
the re-introduction of scientific studies into them. 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 203 

The university faculties were content and con- 
servative after the fashion of universities ever, 
and they quite naturally refused to entertain 
the notion of such a radical change as the intro- 
duction of classical studies into the curriculum. 
This is just exactly what the classical universities 
of the early nineteenth century did when they 
were asked by scientific enthusiasts to re-introduce 
scientific studies into the curriculum, which in the 
course of 300 years had come to be made up al- 
most exclusively of classical studies. In this curi- 
ous way does history repeat itself. 

Unable to obtain a place for the studies in 
humanism in the universities, ruhng princes and 
wealthy members of the nobility proceeded to 
found special schools for these subjects. In 
these schools without the traditions of the past, 
the women asked and obtained the privilege of 
studying. There had come a noteworthy change 
in intellectual interest, a novelty was introduced 
into education. Whenever that happens woman 
always asks and always obtains the privilege of 
the higher education. During the Renaissance 
period she proceeded to show her intellectual 
power. Many of the women of the Renaissance 
became distinguished for scholarship. Perhaps 
one thing should be noted with regard to that. 
Their reputation for scholarship was largely con- 
fined to their younger years. They were more 
precocious, or applied themselves better to their 
studies, and accordingly knew more of the classics 



204 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

at twenty than their male relatives who had the 
same opportunities. Indeed we hear of them as 
brilliant scholars at sixteen and seventeen and 
eighteen. They took part in Latin plays that 
were brilliantly performed before the nobility, 
higher ecclesiastics, cardinals and even the Popes. 
They were brilliant in music, in the languages and 
in their taste for art. Later on in life we do not 
hear so much of them. They evidently were 
ready to leave the serious work of scholarship to 
the men and content themselves with being en- 
lightened patrons of literature, beneficent advo- 
cates of the arts, liberal customers of the artistic 
geniuses of the time. Above all, we find no 
great original works from them. They are charm- 
ing appreciators but not good inventors — at tliis 
time, of course. 

While they do not occupy themselves with dry- 
as-dust scholarship, there is no doubt at all that 
much of the glory of the Renaissance, with its 
great revivals in art and letters, is due to the 
women of the time. It was they who insisted on 
the building of the town houses, finely decorated 
and with charming objects of art in them. It was 
for them that the artists of the time made many 
beautiful things. They were very often the pa- 
trons who enabled churches to obtain from artists 
the wonderful paintings of the time. The sculp- 
tors made for them many charming pieces of 
bric-a-brac. The artists laid out beautiful gar- 
dens that we are only just beginning to appre- 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 205 

ciate again now that our taste for outdoor life 
is being properly cultivated. They bought the 
books that were issued by the Manutiuses at 
Venice. Isabella D'Este had a standing order 
that all the books issued from this great Venetian 
press should be sent to her. Books were costly 
treasures in these times. A single volume of one 
of these incunabula of printing so beautifully 
issued from Manutius's printing establishment 
was worth nearly one hundred dollars in our 
money. 

The women designed their own dresses. They 
encouraged the miniature painting of the time and 
the illumination of books and occasionally took 
up these arts themselves. They fostered the de- 
velopment of textile industries, lacemaking and 
the various kinds of figured cloth, so that we have 
some of the most beautiful inventions in this kind 
at this time. Tapestry-making took on a new 
vigor and beauty because of their patronage. 
They wanted beautiful glass, and new periods of 
marvellous development of glass-tinting and mak- 
ing were ushered in. As can be readily under- 
stood these are the sort of things that men are 
not interested in, and whenever in the history of 
the race we find a period of development of this 
kind we can be sure that educated women are 
responsible for it. These women of the Renais- 
sance decorated their homes beautifully, had them 
built substantially, with wonderful taste and, 
above all, had them set charmingly in the Italian 



206 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

Renaissance gardens that are so deservedly ad- 
mired. 

While they were thus occupied with the beauti- 
ful things of life some of them wrote poetry that 
has lived (Lucrezia Tornabuoni dei Medici, Vit- 
toria Colonna), some of them indulged in fiction 
(Marguerite of Navarre) that is still read, and a 
great epoch of fiction-writing responded to their 
interest as readers; some of them mixed in poli- 
tics and proved their power, at times some of 
them acted as regents for their sons (Forli, 
D'Este), and succeeded magnificently, so that we 
have every phase of development of woman's 
power. There can be no doubt that at this period 
woman was afforded every opportunity for the 
development of her intellectual life, and that she 
took her opportunities with great success. 

We have from this time probably the names of 
more distinguished women than from any other 
corresponding period in the world's history. 
There was a wonderful group of women at the 
Court of Giovanna of Naples in the first half of 
the fifteenth century, because Naples got her 
Renaissance impulses first, being closer by sea 
to Constantinople and having many Greek tradi- 
tions from the old days when Southern Italy was 
Magna Grgecia. Then there are a series of finely 
educated women connected with the Medici house- 
hold at Florence. The mother of the great Lo- 
renzo is the best known of them, and her poems 
show real literary power. The D'Este family is 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 207 

better known general!}', and then there were the 
Gonzagas, some of the women of the house of 
Forli, Vittoria Colonna, whose influence over 
art and artists shows her geniiis quite as well as 
does her writing, and many others. Everywhere 
women are on a footing with men as regards the 
intellectual life. Everywhere they direct conver- 
sations seriously with regard to literary and artis- 
tic subjects, and, indeed, it is they who, in what 
we would now call salons, serve to make intel- 
lectual subjects fashionable, and so concentrate 
attention on them and secure the patronage so 
necessary for artists and writers if they are to 
subsist while doing their work. 

It would be a great mistake, however, to think 
for a moment that it was in Italj^ alone that such 
opportunities for higher education and intellec- 
tual influence were allowed to women. Just as the 
Renaissance movement itself spread throughout 
Europe affecting the education, the literature, the 
art, the architecture, the arts and crafts of the 
time and the nations, so did the feministic move- 
ment spread, and everywhere we find striking 
expressions of it. In France, for instance, the 
Renaissance can be traced very easil}^ in letters 
and architecture, and was not much behind Itah' 
in feminine education. Queen Anne of Bretagne 
organized the Court School of the time, and in- 
terest in literature became the fashion of the hour. 
Marguerite of Navarre is a woman of the Renais- 
sance, and so is Renee of Anjou, while the name 



208 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

of Louise La Cordiere shows, for la cordiere 
means the cord-wainer's daughter, that higher 
education for women was not confined to the 
nobihty. Mary Queen of Scots, educated in 
France, whose letters and whose poetry with oc- 
casional excursions into Latin, show us how thor- 
oughly educated she was, — it must not be for- 
gotten that she was put into prison at twenty-four 
and never again got out, — is a typical woman of 
the French Renaissance. Sichel has told the story 
of these women of France very w^ell, and those 
who want to know the details of the feministic 
movement of the time should turn to him. 

In Spain, too, the Renaissance movement made 
itself felt in every department. Most of Spain's 
cathedrals were finished during the Renaissance 
time, and some of the work is the admiration of 
the world. Spain's literary Renaissance came a 
little later, but when it did it contributed at least 
two great names to the world literature — Cer- 
vantes and Calderon. The women of the nation 
were also affected, and Queen Isabella was a 
deeply intellectual woman of many interests. 
Spain contributed to the feministic movement 
probably the greatest name in the history of 
feminine intellectuality in St. Teresa. How much 
of sympathy there was with this great expression 
of feminine intelligence will be best appreciated 
from the fact that Spanish ecclesiastics talk of 
Teresa as their Spanish Doctor of the Church, 
and that in Rome there is amongst the statues 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 209 

of the Doctors and the Fathers in the Church one 
woman figure, that of St. Teresa, with the title 
mater spirituaUum — mother of spiritual things. 
Her books, profoundly admired by the Spaniards, 
were the favorite reading for such extremely dif- 
ferent minds as Fenelon and Bossuet, and have 
been the storehouse ever since for German mys- 
tics. They were beautifully translated by Cra- 
shaw into English, and have been the subject of 
great interest during the present feministic move- 
ment, especially since George Eliot's reference to 
her in the preface of " JVIiddlemarch." 

In England the Renaissance did not affect art 
much, nor architecture, though it did profoundly 
stir the men of letters, and the great Elizabethan 
period of English literature is really an expres- 
sion of the Renaissance in England. Here al- 
most more than anywhere else in Europe the 
women shared in the uplift and devotion to things 
intellectual that developed. Queen Mary was a 
well-educated woman. Queen Elizabeth read 
Greek as well as Latin easily. Lady Jane Grey 
preferred her lessons in Greek, under Roger 
Ascham, to going to balls and routs and hunting 
parties, and was a blue-stocking in the veriest 
sense of the term. It has been hinted that it 
was perhaps this that disturbed her feminine com- 
mon sense and allowed her to be led so easily 
into the foolish conspiracy in which she lost her 
life. The losing of one's head in things deeply 
intellectual may sometimes mean the losing of it 



210 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

more literally when crowns are at stake. There 
are many other names of noble women of this 
time that might be mentioned and that are well 
known for their intellectual development. That 
the movement did not confine itself to the higher 
nobility we can be sure, for when the better 
classes do ill they are imitated, but so also are 
they imitated when they do well. Besides, the 
story that we have of Margaret ^lore and her 
friends shows that the middle classes were also 
stirred to interest in things intellectual. 

The usual objection, when this story of the 
Renaissance and the feministic movement con- 
nected with it is told, if the narrator would urge 
that here was an earlier period of feminine edu- 
cation than ours, is that, after all, the education of 
this period was confined to only a few of the 
nobility. This is not true, and there are many 
reasons why it is not true. First, the upper 
classes are always imitated by the others, and 
if there was a fashion for education we can be 
sure that it spread. We have not the records of 
many educated women, but those that we have 
all make it clear that education was not confined 
to a few, and that those of the middle classes who 
wanted it could readity secure it. There were 
probably as many women to the population of 
Europe at that time enjoying the higher educa- 
tion as there are proportionately in America at 
the present time. Europe had but a small popu- 
lation altogether in the fifteenth century. There 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 211 

were probably less than 4,000,000 of people in 
Efngland at the end, even, of the sixteenth cen- 
tury. In Elizabeth's time when the census was 
taken, because of the Spanish Armada, these were 
the figures. There were not many more people in 
all Europe then than there are now in England. 
If out of these few, comparatively, we can pick 
out the group of distinguished women whom I 
have just spoken of, then there must have been 
a great many sharing in the privileges of the 
higher education.* 

It is true that it was, as a rule, only the 
daughters of the nobility who received the oppor- 
tunity for the higher education, or at least ob- 
tained it with facility. It must not be forgotten, 
however, just what the nobility of Italy, and, 



* What an interesting reflection on the notion of supposed progress 
is the fact pointed out by Ambassador Bryce in his address on 
Progress (Atlantic, July, 1907), that while out of 40,000,000 of people 
there were so many genius men and women accomplishing work that 
the world will never willingly let die, we with a population ten times 
as great cannot show anything like as many. Most of the great 
names that are most familiar to the modern mind come in a single 
century, — the sixteenth. At the present time the western civilization 
then represented by 40,000,000 has near to 500,000,000 of people. We 
make no pretension at all, hoM'ever, to the claim that we have more 
great men than they had. We should have ten times as many, but on 
the contrary we are quite willing to concede that we have very few 
compared to their number and ahnost none, if indeed there are any, 
who measure up to the high standards of achievement of that time 
more than four centuries ago. It is thoughts of this kind that show 
one how much we must correct the ordinarily accepted notions with 
regard to progress and inevitable development, and each generation 
improving on its predecessors and the like, that are so commonly dif- 
fused but that represent no reality in history at all. 



212 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

indeed, of other countries also, represented. The 
conditions there are most typical and it is 
worth while studying them out. The Medici, for 
instance, of Florence, whose women folk were so 
well educated, were members of the gilds of the 
apothecaries, as their name indicates, who made 
a fortune on drugs and precious stones and beau- 
tiful stuffs from the East, and then became the 
bankers of Europe. Noblemen were created be- 
cause of success in war, success in politics, suc- 
cess in diplomacy, but also because of success in 
commerce, and occasionally success in the arts. 
Not many educators and artists were among 
them any more than in our time, because they 
were not, as a rule, possessed of the fortune 
properly to keep up the dignity of a patent of 
nobility. The daughters of the nobility of Italy, 
however, were not very different, certainly their 
origin was very similar to that of the daughters 
of the wealthy men of America, who are, after all, 
the only ones who can take advantage of the 
higher education in our time. We must not for- 
get that, compared to the whole population, the 
number of women securing the higher education 
is very limited. 

To think that the Renaissance with this pro- 
vision of ample opportunities for feminine educa- 
tion was the first epoch of this kind in the world's 
history would be to miss sadly a host of historical 
facts and their significance. Unfortunately his- 
tory has been so written from the standpoint of 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 213 

man and his interests, that this phase of history 
is not well known and probably less understood. 
History has been too much a mere accumulation 
of facts with regard to war, diplomacy and 
politics. While we have known much of heroes 
and battles, we have known little of education, of 
art, of artistic achievement of all kinds. We 
have known even less of popular movements. 
We have known almost nothing of the great up- 
lift of the masses which created the magnificent 
arts and crafts of the Middle Ages, that we are 
just beginning to admire so much once more, and 
our admiration of them is the best measure of 
our own serious artistic develop)ment. Kings 
and warriors and kings' mistresses and ugly 
diplomacy and rotten politics, have occupied the 
centre of the stage in history. Surely we are 
coming to a time when other matters, the human 
things and not the animal instincts, will be the 
main subject of history; when fighting and sex 
and acquisitiveness and selfishness shall give place 
in history to mutual aid, uplift, unselfishness and 
thoughtfulness for others. 

As soon as history is studied from the stand- 
point of the larger human interests and not that 
of political history, " it is easy to find not only 
traces but detailed stories of feminine educaMon 
at many times. Before the Renaissance the great 
phase of education had been that of the univer- 
sities. The first of the universities was founded 
down at Salerno around a medical school, the 



214 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

second that of Bologna around a law school and 
the third that of Paris with a school of philosophy 
and theology as a nucleus. This seems to he 
about the way that man's interests manifest them- 
selves in an era of development. First, he is 
occupied mainly with his body and its needs; 
then his property and its rights, and finally, as 
he lifts himself up to higher things, his relations 
to his fellow-man and to his Creator come to 
be profound vital interests. Such, at least, is the 
story of the origin of the universities in the 
thirteenth century. 

The surprise for us who are considering the 
story of feminine education and influence is 
what happened at Salerno. Here some twenty 
miles back from Naples, in a salubrious climate, 
not far from the Mediterranean, where old Greek 
traditions had maintained themselves, for South- 
ern Italy was called Magna Grsecia, where the 
intercourse with the Arabs and with the northern 
shores of Africa and with the Near East, brought 
the medical secrets of many climes to a focus, the 
first modern medical school came into existence. 
In the department of women's diseases women 
professors taught, wrote text-books and evidently 
were considered, in every sense of the word, co- 
ordinate professors in the university. We have 
the text-book of one of them, Trotula, who is 
hailed as the founder of the Salernitan School of 
Women Physicians, the word school being used 
in the same sense as when we talk of a school of 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 215 

painting, and not at all in the sense of our mod- 
ern women's medical schools. Trotula was the 
wife of the professor of medicine at the univer- 
sity, Plat^erius I, and the mother of another pro- 
fessor at the university, Platasrius II, herself a 
professor like them. 

There are many other names of women pro- 
fessors at the University of Salerno in this de- 
partment. Women, however, were not alone al- 
lowed to practise this single phase of medicine, 
but we have licenses granted to women in Naples, 
of which at this time Salerno was the univer- 
sity, to practise both medicine and surgery. It 
seems to have been quite common, I should say, 
at least as common as in our own time for women 
to study and practise medicine, and their place in 
the university and the estimation in which their 
books were held, show us that all the difficulties 
in the way of professional education for women 
had been removed and that they were accepted 
by their masculine colleagues on a footing of ab- 
solute equality. 

Probably the most interesting feature of this 
surprising and unexpected development of pro- 
fessional education for women is to be found in the 
conditions out of which Salerno developed. The 
school was originally a monastic school under the 
influence of the Benedictine monks from Monte 
Cassino not far away. The great Archbishop 
Alphanus I, who was the most prominent patron 
and who had been a professor there, was himself 



216 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

a Benedictine monk. How intimately the rela- 
tions of the monks to the school were maintained 
can be realized from the fact that when the great- 
est medical teacher and writer of Salerno, Con- 
stantine Africanus, wanted to have leisure to 
write his great works in medicine, he retired from 
his professorship to the monastery of Monte 
Cassino. His great friend Desiderius was the 
abbot there, and his influence was still very strong 
at Salerno. Desiderius afterwards became Pope, 
and continued his beneficent patronage of this 
Southern Itahan university. In a word, it was in 
the midst of the most intimate ecclesiastical and 
monastic influence that this handing over of the 
department of women's diseases to women in a 
great teaching institution occurred. The wise old 
monks were thoroughly practical, and though 
eminently conservative, knew the needs of man- 
kind very well, and worked out this solution of 
one series of problems. 

When the next great university, that of Bo- 
logna, was founded, it developed, as I have sug- 
gested, around a law school. Irnerius revived 
the study of the old Roman law, and his teaching 
of it attracted so much attention that students 
from all over Europe flocked to Bologna. Law 
is different from medicine in many respects. The 
right of women to study medicine will readily be 
granted, their place in a system of medical edu- 
cation is manifest. With regard to law, however, 
there can scarcely be grave question as to the 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 217 

advisability of woman studying it unless economic 
conditions force her to it. This was particularly 
true at a time when woman could own no prop- 
erty and had no rights until she married. In 
spite of the many inherent improbabilities of this 
development, the law school was scarcely opened 
at Bologna before women became students in it. 
Probably Irnerius' daughter and some of her 
friends were the first students, but after a time 
others came and the facilities seem to have been 
quite open to them. As out of the law school the 
university gradually developed, opportunities for 
study in the other higher branches were accorded 
to women at Bologna. We have the story of 
their success in mathematics, in philosophy, in 
music and in astronomy. 

According to a well-known and apparently 
well authenticated tradition, one distinguished 
woman student of Bologna, Maria Di Novella, 
achieved such success in mathematics about the 
middle of the thirteenth century that she was 
appointed professor of mathematics. Apparently 
the faculty of Bologna had no qualms of educa- 
tional conscience nor betook themselves to such 
halfway measures as one of our modern facul- 
ties, which accords a certificate to a woman that 
she has passed better in the mathematical tripos 
than the Senior Wrangler, though they do not 
accord her the Senior Wranglership. The story 
goes on to say that Signorina Di Novella, know- 
ing that she was pretty, and fearing that her 



218 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

beauty would disturb the minds, at least, of her 
male students, arranged to lecture from behind 
a curtain. This would seem to indicate that the 
blue-stockings of the olden time could be as sur- 
passingly modest as they were intelligent. I re- 
member once telling this story before a convent 
audience. The dear old INIother Superior, who 
had known me for many years, ventured to ask 
me afterwards, " Did you say that she was 
young? " and I said yes, according to the tradi- 
tion; "and handsome?" and I nodded the af- 
firmative, " Well, then," she said, " I do not be- 
lieve the rest of the story." But then, after all, 
what do dear old Mothers Superior know about 
the world or its ways, or about handsome young 
women or their ways, or about the significance of 
traditions which serve to show us that even pretty, 
intelligent women can be as modestly retiring and 
as ready to conceal their charms as they are to 
be charmingly courteous and careful of the feel- 
ings of others? 

It was not alone in law and mathematics, how- 
ever, that women were given opportunities for the 
higher education and even for professional work 
at the University of Bologna. In medicine, as 
well as in law, women reached distinction. The 
first great professor of anatomy of modern times 
is Mondino, whose text-book on dissection, pub- 
lished at the beginning of the fourteenth century, 
continued to be used in the medical schools for 
two centuries. One of his assistants was Ales- 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 219 

Sandra Giliani, one of the two university pro- 
sectors in anatomy. At the Surgeon General's 
Library in Washington, in one of the early 
printed editions of Mondino's work, the frontis- 
piece shows a young woman making the dissec- 
tion before him preparatory to his lecture. To 
her, according to an old Italian chronicle, we owe 
the invention of methods of varnishing and paint- 
ing the tissues of cadavers so that they would 
resemble more their appearance in the living state, 
that they might be preserved for further use, thus 
avoiding to some extent the necessity for constant 
repetition of the deterrent work of dissection, 
even more deterrent at that time. 

It is curiously interesting to find that another 
great improvement in the teaching of anatomy, 
invented in Italy nearly four centuries later, came 
also from a woman teaching at an Italian uni- 
versity, Madame Manzolini. The tradition con- 
necting these two women is unbroken. There is 
not a century from the thirteenth to the eight- 
eenth in which there were not distinguished 
women professors at the universities of Italy, and, 
therefore, also students in large numbers. 

Just how many women students there were we 
do not know. It might seem to be a compara- 
tively easy problem to find out just how many 
there were at any given time by looking up the 
registers of the universities. Once in Bologna 
itself I got hold of the old university registers, 
confident that now I would learn just what was 



220 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

the proportion of women students at the univer- 
sity. I was utterly disappointed, however. Ital- 
ian mothers had, so far as the settlement of this 
question is concerned, the unfortunate habit occa- 
sionally of giving boys' names to girls, and girls' 
names to boys. They called their children after 
favorite saints. A girl might well be called An- 
tonio, for the feminine form was not in common 
use in earlier times. Many boys had for first 
name Maria. It used to be the custom in Venice 
for every child, no matter what its sex, to receive 
from the Church the two names Maria Giovanni, 
and then the parents might add what other names 
they pleased. The names of royalty, with their 
frequent use of mingled masculine and feminine 
names, show how much confusion can be worked 
to any scheme for the determination of the sex 
of students at the old universities by this, for 
us, unfortunate habit. 

Curiously enough, it was during the thirteenth 
century when the development of feminine educa- 
tion in the early university period was at its 
height, that certain changes in the domestic econ- 
omy of the Bolognese are worthy of notice. Two 
kinds of prepared food became popular, if they 
were not, indeed, both invented at this time. One 
of them, bearing the classic name Bologna, is still 
with us, has spread throughout the world, and is 
likely to continue to be an important article of 
food for many centuries more. Another form of 
prepared food was a sort of dessert called Bologna 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 221 

pudding, i)repared from cereals, and which can 
still be purchased in Bologna, though foreigners, 
as a rule, do not care much for it. These two 
articles of food modified materially the prepara- 
tion of food for meals at this time. It was pos- 
sible to buy both of these, as now, ready made, 
and so the housewife was spared the bother and 
trouble and expenditure of time required for 
this work. We have here one phase of the origin 
of the delicatessen stores. This sort of change 
in domestic economy has always been noted when- 
ever women have gone out of the home for other 
occupations and have become something less — or 
more — than the housewives and mothers they were 
before. Such changes in the dietary, however, 
in the direction of ready-made food are never 
popular with men. One German historical writer 
has been unkind enough to say that this is one 
of the reasons why the higher education gradu- 
ally became much less popular, or at least at- 
tracted less attention than before. " Women 
want things for themselves, and if they are op- 
posed insist on getting them," is the way this 
cynic Teuton puts it. " If, after a time, how- 
ever, having got what they want, they find that 
the men do not like them to have it, they gradu- 
ally abandon it." According to him Bologna and 
Bologna pudding saved the stooping over the 
kitchen range, or whatever took its place in those 
days, and gave all classes of women more oppor- 
tunity for intellectual development or at least 



222 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

for occupation with things different from house- 
hold duties, but after a time the more or less 
resentful attitude of the men brought about a 
change. However that may be is hard to say. 

Another interesting feature of the history of 
these times connected in some way with feminine 
education or, at least, with feminine occupa- 
tion with other things besides their households, 
was a great devotion to a particular breed of 
pet dogs of which one hears much in the accounts 
of the life at Bologna at this time. Here, once 
more, the German cynic has had his say. He has 
suggested that, whenever women became occupied 
with things outside their home, with a consequent 
diminution in the number of children, they are 
almost sure to find an outlet for their affections 
in devotion to dogs and other pets. Apparently 
he would suggest that they literally go to the 
dogs. It is very curious that just during this 
thirteenth century, when feminine education at 
Bologna is at its height, one hears so much of 
these pets. At other times in the world's history, 
when women have taken to intellectual interests 
and especially when there has been a fall in the 
birth-rate, this same attention to pet animals is 
worthy of study. 

After the thirteenth century there seems to 
have been a reaction against these pets. It is 
to be hoped that there is no connection between 
this and the prepared foods spoken of, but the 
decline in the popularity of pets and of woman's 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 223 

occupation with intellectual interests went hand 
in hand. For all of this I am indebted to Ger- 
man authorities whose attitude towards feminine 
education may somewhat prejudice them and, in- 
deed, probably does so, but these things are only 
mentioned as showing certain views that are 
held. The interesting thing for us is that after 
a period of somewhat more than a century of 
rather intense interest on the part of the women 
in nearly every phase of the intellectual life, there 
is then a diminution of interest, so that by the 
end of the fourteenth century women, even where 
feminine intellectual life was vigorous, are occu- 
pied almost without exception as they were before 
the university period, mainty with domestic con- 
cerns. 

While feminine education was so common in 
the ecclesiastically ruled universities of Italy, the 
custom did not spread in Western Europe. The 
reason is not far to seek. All of the western uni- 
versities owe their origins to Paris. Oxford was 
due to a withdrawal of English students from 
Paris, Cambridge to a similar withdrawal from 
Oxford. Many of the Scotch universities are 
grandchildren of Paris. All of the French uni- 
versities are direct descendants, except Mont- 
pellier. The Spanish universities have a similar 
relation. The experience with feminine educa- 
tion at Paris had been unfortunate. The Heloise 
and Abelard incident came in a formative stage 
of the university. It settled unfavorably the 



224 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

whole question of feminine attendance at univer- 
sities for the west. It seems a small thing to 
have such a wide and far-reaching influence, but 
it is very often on little things that the success or 
failure of great social movements of any kind 
depends. We have practically no record of any 
relaxation of university regulations in this matter 
in the west. Perhaps the Teutonic character 
was opposed to it, perhaps the Teutonic women 
were less anxious for it, being more occupied 
with Church and children and their home, but 
there was none, and its absence is responsible 
for the feeling so common among us, that now 
for the first time in the world women are enjoying 
the opportunit}^ for the higher education. 

Even the university epoch, however, is not the 
first phase of opportunities for the education of 
woman in modern history. Far from it, indeed, 
we can find much more than traces of a feminist 
movement in other centuries before this, and, in- 
deed, in many of them. When Charlemagne 
established schools for his people and invited 
Alcuin, the English monk, to develop educa- 
tional institutions for his people, the first and 
most imj3ortant school was that of the imperial 
palace where Alcuin himself taught. In this the 
women of Paris were given opportunities quite as 
well as the men; indeed, they seem to have taken 
a more vivid interest and their example seems 
to have been the highest incentive for many of the 
men to take up a work so foreign to their natures, 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 225 

for as yet they had all the harbarous instincts of 
their Gothic ancestors, only slightly tamed and 
modified by two or three centuries of gradual 
uplift and religious training of character. There 
are letters from the women of the palace, and 
especially Charlemagne's daughter, to Alcuin, dis- 
cussing phases of his teaching and suggesting 
problems and questions with regard to the matters 
which he had been making the subject of his 
instruction. 

It would be easy to think that this incident of the 
Palace School did not mean very much and that 
its passing influence did not make itself felt 
widely nor for long. The state of education at 
this time must not be forgotten. Only the clergy, 
as a rule, had leisure for it. All the rest of the 
world were engaged either in the frequent wars 
or in a tireless struggle for subsistence as farm- 
ers, merchants and craftsmen. The nobility neg- 
lected education just as much as the upper classes 
always do, though there were certain fashions 
which gained a foothold and that seem to show 
that they had some interest. Many a nobleman 
of the medieval centuries, however, boasted that 
he could not sign his own name. He was rather 
proud of the fact that he had not lowered him- 
self to mere book knowledge. There were large 
numbers of the clergy and the monks, however, 
and these were the scholars of the period. 

There were also at this time large numbers 
of religious women, and these in their leisure hours 



226 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

spent much time at educational matters and some 
of them accomplished lasting results. The mother 
of the famil), the court dame, the wife of the 
nobleman, whose castle was much more the home 
of work than it has ever been at any time since, 
had but little leisure for the intellectual life. 
The nuns devoted themselves to beautiful handi- 
work, to the composition as well as the transcrip- 
tion of books and to the cultural interests gen- 
erally. 

It has always been true, as a rule, that the 
woman who accomplished anything in the intel- 
lectual life must be either a celibate, or at most, 
the mother of but a child or two. The mother of 
a large family, unless she is extremely excep- 
tional, cannot be expected to be productive in 
the intellectual life. She has not the time for 
original work, and still less for the filing process 
necessary for appropriate expression. There are 
rare exceptions, but they only prove the rule. 
One of the two forms of production apparently 
women must give up to devote theinselves to 
the other. The nuns in the Middle Ages, in the 
retirement of their convents, gave themselves 
much more than we are likely to think possible, 
to literary and scientific production. Within the 
past year I have published sketches of two dis- 
tinguished women of the tenth and twelfth cen- 
turies whose books show us the intellectual inter- 
ests of the women of this time. Only that women 
were having opportunities for mental development 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 227 

these would not have been written, and as they 
were written for women, it is evident that those in- 
terests were quite widely diffused. One of these 
two authors comes in what is sometimes called the 
darkest of the Dark Ages, the tenth century; the 
other was born in the eleventh. They serve to show 
how much more intense than we are likely to think 
was the interest of the time in things intellectual. 
Without printing and without any proper means 
of publication, somehow these women succeeded in 
making literary monuments that have outlasted 
the wreck and ruin of time, and that have been 
of sufficient interest to mankind to be preserved 
among vicissitudes which seemed surely destined 
to destroy them. 

One of the two ladies was Roswitha, or Hrots- 
witha, a nun of Gandersheim, in what is now 
Hanover, who in the tenth century wrote a series 
of comedies in imitation of Terence, probably 
not meant to be played but to be read. She 
says in the preface that the reason for writing 
them was that so many religious were reading 
the indecent literature of classical Rome, with the 
excuse that it was necessary for the cultivation of 
style or for the completion of their education, 
that she wanted and had striven to write some- 
thing moral and Christian to replace the older 
writings. That preface of itself ought to be 
enough to show us that in the nunneries along 
the Rhine, of which we know that there were 
many, there must have been a much more wide- 



228 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

spread and ardent interest in literature, and, above 
all, in classic literature, than we have had any idea 
of until recently. Hrotswitha, to give her her 
Saxon name, was only a young woman of twenty- 
five when she wrote the series of stories and plays 
thus prefaced, and while her style, of course, does 
not compare with the classics, worse Latin has 
often been written by people who were sure that 
they knew more about Latinity than any nun of 
the obscure tenth century could possibly have 
known. 

The other woman writer of about this time was 
Hildegarde, the abbess of a monastery along the 
Rhine, born at the end of the eleventh century, 
who wrote a text-book of medicine, which was the 
most important document in the history of medi- 
cine in this century. The nuns were the nurses 
and the hospital attendants and in the country 
places, to a great extent, the physicians of this 
time. In the cities there were regular practition- 
ers of medicine, but the infirmarian of a monas- 
tery cared for the ailing monks and the people on 
the monastery estates when ill, and often thej^ 
were many in number, and the infirmarian of a 
convent did the same thing for the sisters and for 
at least the women folk among the people of the 
neighborhood. It was in order to gather together 
and preserve the medical traditions of the mon- 
asteries and convents that Hildegarde, who after- 
wards came to be known as St. Hildegarde, wrote 
her volume on medicine. It has been recently 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 229 

issued in the collection of old writings called 
" Migne's Patrologia," and has drawn many 
praises from historical critics for the amount of 
information which it contains. These two, Hro- 
switha and Hildegarde, furnish abundant evidence 
of the intellectual life of the convents of this 
old time and more than hint at how much has 
been lost that might have helped us to a larger 
knowledge of them. 

With this in mind it will be easier to under- 
stand a preceding phase of the history of femi- 
nine education in Europe. The first nation that 
was converted to Christianity in a body, so that 
Christian ideas and ideals had a chance for asser- 
tion and application in the life of the people, was 
Ireland. Christianitj^ when introduced into Rome 
met with the determined opposition of old pagan- 
ism. After the migration of nations and the 
coming down of the barbarians upon the Roman 
Empire, there was little opportunity for Chris- 
tianity to assert itself until after these Teutonic 
peoples had been lifted out of their barbarism to a 
higher plane of civilization. In Ireland, however, 
not only did conversion to Christianity convert the 
whole people, but it came to a people who pos- 
sessed already a high degree of civilization and 
culture, a literature that we have been learning 
to think more and more of in recent years, many 
arts, and the development of science, in the form 
of medicine at least, to a high degree. The law 
and music, the language and the literature of 



230 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

the early Irish all show us a highly cultivated 
people. When Christianity came to them, then, 
education became its watchword. Schools were 
opened everywhere on the island. Ireland be- 
came The Island of Saints and of Scholars, 
and literally thousands of students flocked from 
England and the mainland to these Irish schools. 
The first and the greatest of these was that 
founded by St. Patrick himself at Armagh. Dur- 
ing the century after his death there were prob- 
ably at one time as many as 5,000 students at 
Armagh. Only next in importance to this great 
school of the Irish apostle was that of his great 
feminine co-worker, St. Brigi^, who did for the 
women of Ireland what St. Patrick had been 
doing for the men. It is probable that there were 
3,000 students at Kildare, Brigid's great school, at 
one time. It is curious to think that there should 
have been something like co-education 1,500 years 
ago, and, above all, in Ireland, but Kildare seems 
to have had a system not unlike that in vogue 
at many of our universities in the modern time. 
The male and female students were thoroughly 
segregated, — may I say this is not the last time 
in the world's history that segregation was the 
distinguishing trait of co-education, — but the teach- 
ers of the men at Kildare seem also to have lec- 
tured to the women. The men occupied an en- 
tirely subsidiary position, however; even the 
bishops of Kildare in Brigid's time were ap- 
pointed on her recommendation. For centuries 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 231 

afterwards the Abbess of Kildare, Brigid's suc- 
cessor, had the privilege of a commanding voice 
in the selection of the bishop. The school at Kil- 
dare M^as conducted mainly by and for women, 
though there were men in the neighboring monas- 
tery who taught both classes of puj^ils. 

Perhaps the most interesting feature of the edu- 
cation of Kildare is that it was not concerned 
exclusively, nor even for the major part appar- 
ently, with book-learning. The book-learning of 
the Irish schools was celebrated. Down at Kil- 
dare, however, certain of the arts and crafts were 
cultivated with special success. Lace-making 
and the illumination of books were two of the 
favorite occupations of these students at Kildare 
in which marvellous success was achieved. The 
tradition of Irish lace-making which has main- 
tained itself during all the centuries began, or 
at least, secured its first great prestige, in Brigid's 
time. Gerald the AVelshman, sometimes spoken 
of as Giraldus Cambrensis, told of having seen 
during a journey in Ireland centuries after 
Brigid's time, but nearly a thousand years ago, a 
copy of the Scriptures that was wonderfully 
illuminated. He thought it the most beautiful 
book in the world. His description tallies very 
closely with that of the Book of Kells. Some 
have even ventured to suggest that he actually 
saw the Book of Kells at Kildare. This is ex- 
tremely improbable, however, and the Book of 
Kells almost surely originated elsewhere. There 



232 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

seems, however, to have been at Kildare some 
book nearly as beautiful as the Book of Kells, 
made there, and establishing peradventure the 
thoroughness of the artistic education given at 
Kildare at this time. 

So much for feminine influence and education 
under Christianity. Most people are likely to 
know much more of the place of women in Greece 
and Rome than during Christian times. We 
are prone, however, to exaggerate the dependence 
of woman among both Latins and Greeks and to 
think that she had very few opportunities for in- 
tellectual development and almost none for ex- 
pression of her personality and the exertion of 
her influence. Here, once more, as in many other 
phases of this subject we are, through ignorance, 
assuming conditions in the past that are quite 
unlike those which actually existed. Recently in 
the Atlantic Monthly, Mrs. Emily James Put- 
nam, sometime the Dean of Barnard, in an 
article on " The Roman Lady," * has completely 
undermined usual notions with regard to the posi- 
tion of the Roman woman. The Roman matrons 
had rights all their own, and succeeded in asserting 
themselves in many ways. There was never any 
seclusion of the women in Rome and the Roman 
matrona at all times enjoyed personal freedom, 
entertained her husband's guests, had a voice in 
his affairs, managed his house and came and went 
as she pleased. ]\Irs. Putnam suggests that " in 

* Atlantic Monthly, June, 1910. 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 233 

early days she shared the labors and the dangers 
of the insecure life of a weak people among 
hostile neighbors. It may not be fanciful to say 
that the liberty of the Roman woman of classical 
times was the inherited reward of the prowess 
of a pioneer ancestress, in the same way as the 
social freedom of the American woman to-day 
comes to her from the brave Colonial house- 
mother, able to work and, when need was, to 

fight." 

Indeed the more one studies social life in Rome 
the more clear does it become that conditions were 
very similar for women to what they are iii this 
latest of the republics here in America. This 
will not be surprising if we but learn to realize 
that the circumstances of the development of 
Rome itself, the environment in which the women 
were placed resembled ours of the later time much 
more closely than we have had any idea of until 
recent years. The Italian historian, Ferrero, has 
read new lessons into Roman history for us by 
showing us the past in terms of the present. 

The conditions that developed at Rome, as I 
have said, were very similar to those which de- 
veloped in the modern American republic. Riches 
came, luxury arose. Eastern slaves came to do all 
the work in the household that could formerly 
be accomplished by the women, Greek hand- 
maidens particularly took every solicitude out 
of her hands, and then the Roman matron looked 
around for something to occupy herself with, and 



234 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

it was not long before we have expressions from 
the men that would remind us of many things 
that have been said in the last generation or so. 
There is a well-known speech of Cato delivered 
in opposition to the repeal of the Oppian Law 
which forbade women to hold property, that is 
reported by Livy and sounds strangely modern. 
]Mrs. Putnam talks of it very aptly, " as an 
expression of the ever recurrent uneasiness of the 
male in the presence of the insurgent female." 
" ' If, Romans,' said he, ' every individual among 
us had made it a rule to maintain the prerogative 
and authority of a husband with respect to his 
own wife, we should have less trouble with the 
whole sex. It was not without painful emotions 
of shame that I just now made my way into the 
forum through a crowd of women. Had I not 
been restrained by respect for the modesty and 
dignity of some individuals among them, I should 
have said to them, " What sort of practice 
is this, of running out into public, besetting 
the streets, and addressing other women's hus- 
bands? Could not each have made the same re- 
quest to her husband at home? Are j^our bland- 
ishments more seductive in public than in private, 
and with other women's husbands than your 
own?" 

Our ancestors thought it not proper that 
women should transact any, even private business, 
without a director. We, it seems, suffer them 
now to interfere in the management of state 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 235 

affairs. Will you give the reins to their un- 
tractable nature and their uncontrolled passions? 
This is the smallest of the injunctions laid on 
them by usage or the laws, all of which women 
bear with impatience; they long for liberty, or 
rather for license. What will they not attempt 
if they win this victory? The moment they have 
arrived at an equality with men, they will become 
your superiors.' " 

The social conditions which developed at Rome 
are indeed so strangely like those with which 
we are now familiar as to be quite startling. As 
a mere man I should hesitate to suggest this, since 
it refers particularly to feminine affairs and 
domestic concerns, but since it has been betrayed 
by one of the sex perhaps I may venture to quote 
it. Once more I turn to Mrs. Putnam for an apt 
expression of the conditions. She says: 

" The Greeks, who, to be sure, had nothing in 
their dwellings that was not beautiful, had still 
supposed the great works of art were for public 
places. With the Romans began the private col- 
lection of chefs-d'cEUvre in its most snobbish 
aspect. The parts played by the sexes in this 
enterprise sometimes showed the same division of 
labor that prevails very largel}^ in a certain great 
nation of our own day that shall be nameless: the 
husband paid for the best art that money could 
buy, and the wife learned to talk about it and 
to entertain the artist. It is true that the Roman 
lady began also to improve her mind. She stud- 



236 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

ied Greek, and hired Greek masters to teach her 
history and philosophy. Ladies flocked to hear 
lectures on all sorts of subjects, originating the 
odd connection between scholarship and fashion 
which still persists." 

This subject may be pursued with ever-increas- 
ing recognition of similarity between that time 
and our own. For instance, Mrs. Putnam says: 
" A woman of fashion, we are told, reckoned it 
among her ornaments if it were said of her that 
she was well read and a thinker, and that she 
wrote lyrics almost worthy of Sappho. She, too, 
must have her hired escort of teachers, and listen 
to them now and then, at table or while she was 
having her hair dressed, — at other times she was 
too busy. And often while the philosopher was 
discussing high ethical themes her maid would 
come in with a love-letter, and the argument 
must wait till it was answered. 

" Nothing very important in the way of pro- 
duction resulted from all the lady's literary ac- 
tivity. The verses, if Sulj)icia's they be, are 
the sole surviving evidence of creative effort 
among her kind; and, respectable as they are, 
they need not disturb Sappho's repose. It was 
indirectly that the Roman lady affected literature, 
since kinds began to be produced to her special 
taste; for it is hardly an accident that the vers de 
societe should expand, and the novel originate, in 
periods when for the first time women were a 
large element in the reading public." 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 237 

In our time it has been said, that one of the 
reasons why the young man does not marry is 
often that he is fearful of the superiority of the 
college-bred young woman. He knows that he 
himself has no more intelligence than is absolutely 
necessary for the proper conduct of life, and he 
fears that his " breaks " in grammar, in literature, 
in taste for art, in social things, may make him the 
laughing-stock of the educated woman. We would 
be reasonably sure, most of us, that at least this is 
the first time in the world's history that anything 
like this has haj)pened. It is rather interesting, 
however, to read some of the reflections of the 
Roman satiric poets on the state of affairs that 
developed in Rome as a consequence of study 
and lectures and at least supposed scholarship 
becoming the fashion. " I hate the woman," says 
Juvenal, " who is always turning back to the 
grammatical rules of Pal«mon and consulting 
them; the feminine antiquary who recalls verses 
unknown to me, and corrects the words of an un- 
polished friend which even a man would not ob- 
serve. Let a husband be allowed to make a 
solecism in peace." I recommend the reading of 
Juvenal to the college young woman of the mod- 
ern time, not only for its classic but for its social 
value. 

Among the Greeks the position of wonjen was 
quite different from what is usually supposed. 
It is only too often the custom to think that the 
Greek women, confined to a great degree to their 



238 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

houses, sharing httle in the public discussions, 
coming very slightly into public in any way, were 
more or less despised by the men and tolerated, 
but surely not much respected. The place of women 
in life at any time can be best judged from the 
position assigned them by the dramatic poets of 
any period. The larger the mind of the dramatic 
poet, the more of a genius he is, the more surely 
does his estimate expressed in literature represent 
life as he saw it. Ruskin pointed out that Shake- 
speare has no heroes and many heroines; that, 
while he has no men that stand in unmarred per- 
fection of character, " there is scarcely a play 
that has not a perfect woman in it, steadfast 
in grave hope and errorless purpose; conceived 
in the highest heroic type of humanity." What 
is thus true of Shakespeare is just as true of the 
great dramatic poets of the Greeks. In prac- 
tically all the extant plays of ^schylus, Sophocles 
and Euripides, women are the heroines. They 
are represented as nobler, braver, more capable 
of suffering, with a better appreciation of their 
ethical surroundings and the realities of life, than 
the men around them. As much as Antigone is 
superior to her quarrelsome brothers, as Alcestis 
rises above her selfish husband, as Tecmessa is 
superior to and would have saved Ajax if only 
he had permitted her, so everywhere do we find 
women occupying not a place qf equality but a 
position of superiority. 

These plays were written by men. Just as in 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 239 

the case of Shakespeare they were written by 
men mainly to be witnessed by men, for while 
three-fourths of our audiences at theatres now are 
women, at least three-fourths of the audience in 
Shakespeare's time were men, and in the old 
Greek theatre the men largely exceeded the women 
in attendance. These were masculine pictures of 
the place of woman, painted not in empty com- 
pliment but with profoundest respect and deep- 
est understanding. We honor these writers as the 
greatest in the history of literature because they 
saw life so clearly and so truly. Literature is 
only great when it mirrors life to the nail. What 
the Greek dramatists had done. Homer had done 
before them. His picture of the older Greek 
women shows us that they were on an absolute 
equality in their households with the men, that 
not only were they thoroughly respected and 
loved for themselves, but, to repeat Ruskin, they 
were looked up to as infallibly wise counsellors, 
as the best possible advisers to whom a man could 
go, provided thej^ themselves were of high char- 
acter and their hearts, as well as their intellects, 
were interested in the problems involved. 

There are, of course, in all of the dramatists 
some wicked women. In the whole round of 
Shakespeare's characters there are only three 
wicked women who have degraded their woman- 
hood among the principal figures. These are 
Lady Macbeth, Regan and Goneril. We have 
corresponding characters in the Greek dramatists. 



240 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

Clytemnestra is the Lady Macbeth of Greek 
Tragedy. Euripides, the feminist as he has been 
called, has shown us, as feminists ever, more of 
the worst side of women than his greater prede- 
cessors ^schylus and Sophocles. He has ex- 
hibited the extent to which religious over-enthusi- 
asm can carry women in the " Bacchse," and was 
the first to introduce the sex problem. In gen- 
eral it may be said, as Ruskin says of Shake- 
speare, that when a Greek dramatist pictures, 
wicked women " they are at once felt to be fright- 
ful exceptions to the ordinary laws of life; fatal 
in their influence also in proportion to the power 
for good which they had abandoned." Indeed 
tragedy, as we see it in the great tragic poets, 
might be defined as the failure on the part of a 
good woman to save the men who are nearest 
and dearest to her from the faults into which their 
characters impel them. All the great dramatists, 
ancient and modern, represent women once more 
in Ruskin's words as " infallibly faithful and wise 
counsellors — incorruptibly just and pure exam- 
ples — strong always to sanctify, even when they 
cannot save." 

How little there is in any question of evolution 
having brought new influence or higher place to 
woman may be very well realized from this 
position of women among the old Greeks. Glad- 
stone has called attention to it very forcibly in 
his " Essay on the Place of Ancient Greece in 
the Providential Order," when he says, " Outside 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 241 

the pale of Christianity, it would be difficult to 
find a parallel in point of elevation to the Greek 
women of the heroic age." He has taken the place 
of woman as representing the criterion by which 
the civilization and the culture of a people at any 
time may be judged, though he does not at all 
think that one finds a constant upward tendency 
in history in this regard. He says: 

" For when we are seeking to ascertain the 
measure of that conception which any given race 
has formed of our nature, there is, perhaps, no 
single test so effective, as the position which it 
assigns to woman. For as the law of force is 
the law of brute creation, so in proportion as he 
is under the yoke of that law does man approxi- 
mate to the brute. And in proportion, on the other 
hand, as he has escaped from its dominion, is he 
ascending into the higher sphere of being and 
claiming relationship with Deity. But the eman- 
cipation and due ascendency of woman are not 
a mere fact, they are the emphatic assertion of a 
principle, and that principle is the dethronement 
of the law of force and the enthronement of other 
and higher laws in its place and its despite." 

Of course, of the formal education of the women 
of Greece we know very little. We do know 
that they would not have been respected as they 
were, looked up to by their sons and their hus- 
bands, honored as the poets have shown them to 
be, put upon the stage as the heroines of the race, 
only that they had been intellectually as well as 



242 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

morally the equals — nay, the superiors — of the 
men around them. We do not know much about 
the teaching of women before and during the 
classical j)eriod, but we can understand very well 
from what we know of 'them that they must have 
had good opportunities for education. Plato, of 
course, insists that women should be educated in 
every way exactly as the men. He mentions 
specifically gymnastics and horseback riding, and 
says that women should be trained in these as well 
as things intellectual, for they should have their 
bodies developed as well as their minds. His 
reason for demanding equal education is very in- 
teresting, because it is an anticipation of what is 
being said rather emphatically at the present time. 
He says: " If I am right nothing can be more 
foolish than our modern fashion of training men 
and women differently, whereby one-half of the 
power of the city is lost. For reflect if women 
are not to have the education of men some other 
must be found for them, and what other can we 
propose? " His idea evidently was that only one- 
half those who ought to be citizens were properly 
trained for civic duties if the education of women 
were neglected. 

It is extremely interesting in the light of this 
to read some of Aristophanes' pla5^s. Three of 
them, " Lysistrata," the " Thesmophoriazusae," 
which has a simpler name " The Women's Festi- 
val," for it referred to the great feast of Thes- 
mophoria in honor of Ceres and Proserpine, and 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE MS 

the " Ecclesiazusae." This last title may be ren- 
dered a httle freely " The Female Parliament," 
for in it women secure, by a little fraud, the 
right to vote and vote themselves into office as 
the main portion of the plot of the play. All 
three of these plays refer particularly to the 
question of women's rights, and though " The 
Women's Festival " was written as a satire on 
Euripides it is evident that only this subject 
was about as prominently before the people of 
Athens as the question of votes for women is 
in our time, Aristophanes would not have written 
these satiric comedies. The subjects of his plays 
are always the very latest actuality in Athens. 
Socrates was satirized in " The Clouds " within 
a few months of his death. " The War " was 
written while Athens was actually engaged in it, 
and " The Peace " was written within a few 
months after the signing of the treaty. 

Votes for women must actually have been on 
the very centre of the carpet when Aristophanes 
wrote his " Ecclesiazusae " or " Feminine Parlia- 
ment." Lest it should be thought that I intrude 
myself in any way in trying to boil down for you 
the old satiric comedy, or that I am modernizing 
Aristophanes in order to adapt the ideas of this 
play more fully to conditions that are around us 
at the present time, I shall read to you the ex- 
cellent condensation of it made by the Rev. W. 
Lucas Collins, M.A., in his " Aristophanes," in 
the series of " Ancient Classics for English Read- 



244 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

ers," that scholarly introduction to the classic 
authors of which Mr. Collins is the editor. He 
says: 

" The women have determined, under the lead- 
ership of a clever lady named Praxagora, to re- 
form the constitution of Athens. For this pur- 
pose they will dress like men — beards included — 
and occupy the seats in the Pnyx, so as to be able 
to command a majority of votes in the next public 
assembly, the parliament of Athens. Praxagora 
is strongly of opinion with the modern Mrs. Poy- 
ser, that on the point of speaking, at all events, 
the women have great natural advantages over the 
men; that 'when they have anything to say they 
can mostly find words to say it in.' They hold 
a midnight meeting for the purpose of rehearsing 
their intended speeches and getting accustomed 
to their new clothes. Two or three of the most 
ambitious orators unfortunately break down at 
the very outset, much to their leader's disgust, 
by addressing the assembly as ' ladies ' and 
swearing female oaths and using many other un- 
parliamentary expressions quite unbefitting their 
masculine attire. Praxagora herself, however, 
makes a speech which is very generally admired. 
She complains of the mismanagement hitherto of 
public affairs, and asserts that the only hope of 
salvation for the state is to put the government 
into the hands of the women; arguing, like Lysis- 
trata in the comedy of that name, that those who 
have so long managed the domestic establishment 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 245 

successfully are best fitted to undertake the same 
duties on a larger scale. The women, too, are 
shown by their advocate to be highly conservative, 
and, therefore, safe guardians of the public in- 
terests : 

" They roast and boil after the good old fashion, 
They keep the holidays that were kept of old, 
They make their cheesecakes by the old receipts. 
They keep a private bottle like their mothers. 
They plague their husbands — as they always did. 

Even in the management of a campaign, they will 
be found more prudent and more competent than 
the men: 

" Being mothers, they'll be chary of the blood 
Of their own sons, our soldiers ; being mothers. 
They will take care their children do not starve 
When they're on service ; and, for ways and means. 
Trust us, there's nothing cleverer than a woman : 
And as for diplomacy, they'll be hard indeed 
To cheat — they know too many tricks themselves. 

Her speech is unanimously applauded; she is 
elected lady-president on the spot, by public ac- 
clamation, and the chorus of ladies march off to- 
wards the Pnyx to secure their places like the old 
gentlemen in ' The Wasps ' ready for the day- 
break. 

" In the next scene, two of the husbands enter 
in great perplexity, one wrapped in his wife's 
dressing gown, and the other with only his under- 



246 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

garment on and without his shoes. They both 
want to go to the assembly but cannot find their 
clothes. While they are wondering what in the 
world their wives can have done with them, and 
what is become of the ladies themselves, a third 
neighbor, Chremes, comes in. He has been to 
the assembly; but even he was too late to get the 
threepence which was allowed out of the public 
treasury to all who took their seat in good time, 
and which all Athenian citizens, if we may trust 
their satirist, were so ludicrously eager to secure. 
The place was quite full already, and of strange 
faces, too. And a handsome fair-faced youth 
(Praxagora in disguise, we are to understand) 
had got up, and amid the loud cheers of those 
unknown voters had proposed and carried a reso- 
lution, that the government of the state should 
be placed in the hands of a committee of ladies, — 
an experiment which had found favor also with 
others, chiefly because it was ' the only change 
which had not as yet been tried at Athens.' His 
two neighbors are somewhat confounded at his 
news, but congratulate themselves on the fact that 
the wives will now, at all events, have to see to 
the maintenance of the children, and that ' the 
gods sometimes bring good out of evil.' 

" The women return, and get home as quickly 
as they can to change their costume so that the 
trick by which the passing of this new decree has 
been secured may not be detected. Praxagora 
succeeds in persuading her husband that she had 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 247 

been sent for in a hurry to attend a sick neighbor, 
and only borrowed his coat to put on ' because the 
night was so cold ' and his strong shoes and staff, 
in order that any evil-disposed person might 
take her for a man as she tramped along, and so 
not interfere with her. She at first affects not 
to have heard of the reform which has been just 
carried, but when her husband explains it, de- 
clares it will make Athens a paradise. Then 
she confesses to him that she has herself been 
chosen, in full assembly, ' Generalissima of the 
state.' She puts the question, however, just as 
we have all seen it put by a modern actress, — 
' will this house agree to it ? ' And if Praxagora 
was at all attractively got up, we may be sure 
it was carried by acclamation in the affirmative. 
Then, in the first place, there shall he no more 
poverty; there shall he community of goods, and 
so there shall he no law suits, and no gamhling 
and no informers. (They promised more even 
than our suffragettes — if possible.) Moreover, 
there shall be community of wives, — and all the 
ugly wives shall have the first choice of husbands. 
So she goes off to her public duties, to see that 
these resolutions are carried out forthwith ; the good 
citizen begging leave to follow close at her side, 
so that all who see him maj" say, ' What a fine 
fellow is our Generalissima's husband ! ' 

" The scene changes to another street in Athens, 
where the citizens are bringing out all their 
property, to be carried into the market-place 



248 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

and inventoried for the common stock. Citizen 
' A ' dances with delight as he marshals his dilapi- 
dated chattels into a mock procession — from the 
meal sieve, which he kisses, it looks so pretty with 
its powdered hair, to the iron pot which looks as 
black ' as if Lysimachus ' (some well-known fop 
of the day, possibly present among the audience) 
' had been boiling his hair dye in it.' This pa- 
triot, at least, has not much to lose, and hopes 
he may have something to gain, under these fe- 
male communists. 

"But his neighbor, who is better off, is in no 
such hurry. The Athenians, as he remarks, are 
always making new laws and abrogating them; 
what has been passed to-day very likely will be 
repealed to-morrow. Besides it is a good old na- 
tional habit to take, not to give. He will wait a 
while before he gives in an inventory of his pos- 
sessions. (One might think of an income tax 
law in the United States in the twentieth cen- 
tury. ) 

" But at this point comes the city-beadle (an 
appointment now held, of course, by a lady) 
with a summons to a banquet provided for all 
citizens out of the public funds: and amongst 
the items in the bill of fare is one dish whose 
name is composed of seventy-seven syllables — 
which Aristophanes gives us, but which the reader 
shall be spared. (It has been boiled down by 
the American schoolboy to just ' hash.') Citizen 
* B ' at once delivers it as his opinion that ' every 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 249 

man of proper feeling should support the consti- 
tution to the utmost of his ability,' and hurries to 
take his place at the feast. There are some 
difficulties caused, very naturally by the new com- 
munistic regulations as to providing for the old 
and ugly women, but with these we need not deal. 
The piece ends with an invitation, issued by direc- 
tion of Praxagora through her lady-chamberlain, 
to the public generally, spectators included, to 
join the national banquet which is to inaugurate 
the new order of things." 

In a previous comedy Aristophanes had told of 
another interference of women in the political 
life of Athens that contains so many reminders 
of the modern time, and shows so definitely how 
old the new is, that it deserves a place here. 
Above all, the desertions from the cause of the 
women when they find that their political duties 
interfere with their home duties, and that they 
have to sacrifice many of the joys of life even 
though they are duties that may at times seem 
irksome enough, — children, household work, etc., 
— for these newer obligations with which they have 
so little sympathy, is especially interesting. Once 
more I prefer to take the Rev. Mr. Collins' sum- 
mary of the play in order that it may be clear 
that Aristophanes' meaning is not being stretched 
for the purpose of making points with regard to 
present-day conditions. After all, Mr. Collins' 
little book was written very nearly thirty years 
ago, when very little of the present feministic 



250 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

movement, at least in the form in which 
we are now familiar with it, had asserted it- 
self. 

" They determine, under the leading of the 
clever Lysistrata, wife to one of the magistrates, 
to take the question (of the ending of the war) 
into their own hands. They resolve upon a volun- 
tary separation from their husbands — a practical 
divorce a mensa et thoro — until peace with Sparta 
shall be proclaimed. It is resolved that a body of 
the elder matrons shall seize the Acropolis and 
make themselves masters of the public treasury. 
These form one of the two choruses in the play, 
the other being composed of the old men of 
Athens. The latter proceed (with a good deal of 
comic difficulty, owing to the steepness of the 
ascent and their shortness of breath) to attack 
the Acropolis, armed with torches and fagots 
and pans of charcoal, with which they hope to 
smoke out the occupants. But the women have 
provided themselves with buckets of water, which 
they emj)ty on the heads of their assailants, who 
soon retire discomfited to call the police. But the 
police are, in their turn, repulsed by these resolute 
insurgents, whom they do not exactly know how 
to deal with. At last a member of the public 
committee comes forward to parley, and a dia- 
logue takes place between him and Lysistrata. 
' Why,' he asks, ' have they thus taken possession 
of the citadel ? ' ' They have resolved henceforth 
to manage the public revenues themselves,' is the 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 251 

reply, ' and not allow them to be api^lied to carry- 
ing: on this ruinous war.' ' That is no business for 
women,' argues the magistrate. ' Why not? ' says 
Lysistrata ; ' the wives have long had the manage- 
ment of the x^rivate purses of the husbands, to 
the great advantage of both.' In short, the women 
have made up their minds to have their voice no 
longer ignored, as hitherto, in questions of peace 
and war. Their remonstrances have always been 
met with the taunt that ' war is the business of 
men;' and to any question they have ventured to 
ask their husbands on such points, the answer has 
always been the old cr}^ — old as the days of 
Plomer — 'Go spin, you jade, go spin!' But 
they will put up with it no longer. As they have 
always had wit enough to clear the tangled 
threads in their work, so they have no doubt of 
settling all these difficulties and complications in 
international disputes, if it is left to them. But 
what concern, her opponent asks, can women have 
with war, who contribute nothing to its dangers 
and hardships? 'Contribute, indeed!' says the 
lady; 'we contribute the sons who carry it on.' 
And she throws down to her adversary her hood, 
her basket and her spindle, and bids him ' go home 
and card wool,' — it is all such old men are fit for; 
henceforth the proverb (of the men's making) 
shall be reversed, — ' War shall be the care of the 
women.' The magistrate retires not having got 
the best of it, very naturally, in an encounter of 
words; and the chorus of elders raise the cry — 



252 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

well known as a popular partisan cry at Athens, 
and sure to call forth a hearty laugh in such 
juxtaposition — that the women are designing to 
' set up a tyranny ! ' 

" But poor Lysistrata soon has her troubles. 
Her unworthy recruits are fast deserting her. 
They are going off to their husbands in the most 
sneaky manner — creeping out through the little 
hole under the citadel which led to the celebrated 
cave of Pan, and letting themselves down from 
the walls by ropes at the risk of breaking their 
necks. Those who are caught all have excellent 
excuses. One has some fleeces of fine Milesian 
wool at home which must be seen to, — she is sure 
the moths are eating them. Another has urgent 
occasion for the doctor; a third cannot sleep 
alone for fear of the owls — of which, as every one 
knows, there were really a great many at Athens. 
The husbands, too, are getting uncomfortable 
without their housekeepers; there is no one to 
cook their victuals; and one poor soul comes and 
humbly entreats his wife at least to come home 
and wash and dress the baby. 

"It is becoming plain that either the war or 
the wives' resolution will soon give way, when 
there arrives an embassy from Sparta. They 
cannot stand this general strike of the wives. 
They are agreed already with their enemies, the 
Athenians, on one point — as to the women — that 
the old Greek comedian's proverb, which we have 
borrowed and translated freely, is true, — 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 253 

" There is no living; with 'cm — or without 'cm." 



'fc> 



They are come to offer terms of peace. When 
two parties are ah'eady of one mind, as Lysis- 
trata observes, they are not long in coming to 
an understanding. A treaty is made on the 
spot, with remarkably few preliminaries." 

Whenever we have sufficient remains to illus- 
trate the life of any period of history with rea- 
sonable completeness, we find women occupying 
a much more important place than is usually 
conceded to them. The trouble is that we assume 
that we know something about the past, because 
we have somewhere obtained a vague notion of 
it and then we fill in details in accordance with 
that preconceived notion. The general rule, un- 
fortunatelj^ is to make as little of the past as 
possible and to consider that, of course, they must 
have been very different from us, and surely far 
behind us in everything. The more one really 
knows of history, however, the less does one think 
this. We must not let our complacent self- 
satisfaction with our own generation disturb our 
proper appreciation of past generations, however. 
An English writer said not very long ago, and 
now that we have reviewed various periods in the 
history of feminine influence and of education, 
I think that you will recognize the justice of what 
he said, "It is too much the easy custom of the 
present self-admiring day — not a bit more self- 
satisfied, after all, than each day has been in its 



254- FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

turn — to hold the women of the past as something 
httle better than dolls for their attainments, a 
little dearer than slaves for their position and 
despicably content therein." Nothing could well 
be less true than this. 

What is apt to strike us, however, after a 
review of the phases of feminine education and 
influence such as I have sketched, is that there 
are undoubtedly times during which very little is 
heard of feminine influence and almost nothing at 
all of feminine education. There are periods 
on the other hand when these subjects are the 
very centre of human interest. This interest 
waxes to a certain climax and then apparently 
wanes. What is the reason for these waxings 
and wanings? Is there anything that we know 
about them that will help us to account for them? 
If women have once achieved a certain position 
and have once secured certain privileges in the 
matter of education, it might reasonably be ex- 
pected that, barring some great cataclysm or po- 
litical upheaval, that completely disrupted society, 
they would not abandon these hard-won rights 
and precious privileges, and so we should not 
have to be going through the storm and stress of 
another period of discussion, controversy, oppo- 
sition with regard to woman's rights. How is 
it that rights once attained — and never unless 
after a struggle, for no matter how civilized a 
period or how cultured a jieople, they do not 
grant rights to any class unless forced to do so — 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 255 

that these rights have afterwards been lost, 
or at least greatly diminished and partly for- 
gotten ? 

In this we come upon one of the mysteries 
of history and of the hfe of man. How is it that 
men secure certain knowledge and then forget it — 
literally forget all about it— how is it that men 
make discoveries and then lose sight of them so 
that they have to be m.ade over again; how is it 
that men even make useful inventions of all kinds 
and these are lost sight of and the invention has 
to be made over again in succeeding generations? 
How is it that the Suez Canal was opened at 
least once before our time and then allowed to 
fill up with sand, and we had to do the work all 
over again two generations ago? How is it that 
America was discovered at least twice, probably 
oftener, before Columbus' time, and yet his was a 
real discovery? We actually have Papal docu- 
ments addressed to bishops in Greenland from 
Popes in the thirteenth century, mentioning mis- 
sions on the mainland of America. There are 
traditions that seem to point beyond all doubt 
to the fact that the Irish monks were here in 
America in the eighth and ninth centuries. Those 
traditions come from three or four different 
sources. There was a reverence for the cross 
among the Indians in certain parts of the coun- 
try. A tradition of white-robed priests who 
came from over the sea. The Norse name for 
America was Irland it Mikla, Ireland the Great, 



256 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

that is, the island of the Irish, much larger than 
Ireland itself and lying beyond it in the seas. 

How is it, indeed, that there are many discov- 
eries and rediscoveries of the same principle in 
science? Heron's engine at Alexandria was an 
anticipation of the turbine principle in the ap- 
plication of steam. When we dug up surgical 
instruments at Pompeii we were surprised to 
find that they had the form of many instruments 
that we thought we had invented in our time. In 
glass-making, in iron-working, in all the arts and 
crafts precious secrets are discovered, then lost, 
then rediscovered, and this may even happen sev- 
eral times. We find no sign of a continuous 
progress, but recurring phases that represent 
ups and downs in man's interest in certain things 
and his achievements corresponding to the inten- 
sity of his interest. Such a thing as a regular 
progressive advance one finds nowhere in history. 
Nations do not maintain their power after they 
have achieved it. Just as soon as the struggle to 
maintain themselves is over, internal troubles 
of various kinds set disintegrating factors at 
work and it is n(^t long before decadence can be 
noted and then the disappearance of the people 
or at least of its national prominence becomes 
inevitable. We shall not be surprised to find 
ups and downs in the history of feminine influence 
and education, for this is the rule of history. We 
have only been laboring under the false notion 
that definite progress was the rule because of over- 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 257 

absorption in the evolution theory — but it is not. 
There seems to be in this matter a certain check 
upon the occupation of woman with interests ex- 
ternal to her household that would tempt her to 
occupy herself much with duties extraneous to the 
family life. After all, one thing is perfectly 
clear. Only women can be mothers. We have not 
succeeded even in getting the slightest possible 
hint of any method of continuing the race except 
by the ordinary process of maternity. Whatever 
of direct evolution the advocates of the theory 
of evolution have suggested as coming in human- 
ity so that it may be the subject of observation, 
has been due in their minds to the lengthening 
of the period during which the young of the 
race are cared for. As we go up in the scale 
of life from the lowest to the highest, infancy — 
meaning by that the period during which the off- 
spring is cared for by the parents — lengthens. 
In the very small beings there is none. As we 
ascend in the scale we find traces of parental 
care. Then comes occupation of the parents with 
their offspring from a few hours up to a day or 
two, and then finally months and years, until in 
the human race infancj^ has been gradually pro- 
longed to twenty years. This is Herbert Spen- 
cer's observation and it is interesting and sug- 
gestive. A mother then especially, though also 
a father, must care for children, not alone for 
months before and after birth, but for a score of 
years. 



258 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

Occupation with other things, though neces- 
sary, detracts from this care of children, and if 
exaggerated leads to the celibate condition or 
that approaching it, the limitation of families 
within narrow bounds. The mother of but two 
or three children may occupy herself with other 
things and, indeed, has to find other occupation of 
mind. At certain periods in the world's history 
a certain number of these women accumulate and 
the tendency to celibacy or to very limited ma- 
ternity makes itself felt, and then this class of 
people usually fails to propagate enough of the 
species like themselves to take their places in the 
world. It is a matter of common comment at the 
present moment that if the women's colleges were 
to depend on the j^rogeny of their graduates to 
fill the classes in succeeding years, the numbers 
at the schools not only would not increase but 
would constantly tend to decrease. Of course 
this same thing is true of the descendants of the 
male graduates of many of our Eastern universi- 
ties, and I believe that attention has been particu- 
larly called to it with regard to our three oldest 
universities. Such are the risks of life and the 
fatalities incident to disease, even with our present 
improved hygienic conditions, that anj^thing less 
than five or six children in a family will not prove 
sufficient eventually to replace the parents in 
their activities. When to small families is added 
the number of celibates consequent upon absorp- 
tion in self-improvement, then the failure of the 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 259 

cultured classes even to replace themselves be- 
comes very manifest, and hence our dwindling 
native populations, if we take that word to mean 
the families that have been in the country for 
more than two generations. 

Nature does not confide conditions in humanity 
entirely to man, however. This would be to leave 
mankind subject to certain whims and fashions 
and the caprices of times and people. There are 
many biological checks which maintain mankind 
in a certain equilibrium. A typical example of 
it is the regulation of the number of each sex 
born. In general the proportion of the sexes 
to one another maintains a ratio very near that of 
equality under ordinary natural conditions. This 
obtains in spite of the fact that man is so much 
more subject to accidents than woman, so much 
more likely to catch and succumb to disease and 
so much more likel}^ to wear himself out pre- 
maturely as the result of his labors. The death- 
rate among women at all ages is lower than that 
of men, yet a constant, definite equilibrium of the 
sexes is maintained with accurate nicety. There 
is evidently some check existing in nature itself 
that prevents any disturbance of this fixed ratio. 

Not only is nature able to maintain this, but 
in cases where, because of some serious disturbance 
of natural conditions, a decided inequality of the 
ratio occurs by accident, nature is able to restore 
conditions to the previous normal, without our 
being quite able to understand just how this is 



260 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

accomplished. We do not know how sex Is deter- 
mined. There have been many explanations of- 
fered, but all of them have proved inadequate and 
most of them quite nugatory. In spite of our 
lack of knowledge there have been times in his- 
tory when a striking manifestation of nature's 
power has occurred. For instance, after the 
Thirty Years' War in Germany the ratio between 
the sexes had been so much disturbed that, ac- 
cording to some historians, there were probably 
nearly twice as many women as men in existence 
in the Germanic countries. The men had been cut 
off by the war itself, by famines consequent upon 
it, by extreme and unusual efforts to support 
their families and by epidemic diseases in camps 
and campaigns. The disproportion was so great 
that a relaxation of the marriage laws was per- 
mitted for a time in certain of the countries and 
men were allowed to have two wives. 

Under these conditions nature at once began to 
reassert herself, the number of male births was 
greatly increased and the disproportion between 
the sexes immediately began to lessen. At the end 
of scarcely more than three generations the normal 
equilibrium of the sexes was restored and there 
was about an equal number of men and women 
again. Here we have the effect of one of these 
curiously interesting biological checks upon man's 
foolish quarrelsomeness which might result in a 
too great disproportion of the sexes. 

We shall not be surprised, then, if we find other 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 261 

such biological checks and compensations exerting 
themselves. In recent years Sir Francis Cxalton, 
the cousin of Darwin, who is recognized as the 
best living authority in statistical biology, and 
Professor Karl Pearson, who has done more 
than any one else to bring out many curious and 
interesting but very important biological laws 
by the study of statistics, have insisted in their 
studies of the effect of the law of primogeniture, 
that when there are small families, the children 
are more likely to be nervous, oftener have an 
inclination to mental disease and have less resistive 
vitality against disease in general than the average 
child of the larger families. There is a small 
but significant advantage in vitalitj^ that accrues 
to later children of a family. This is so contrary 
to the frequently expressed opinion that only the 
children of small families can be brought up 
properl}^ to resist disease and have such advan- 
tages in their education and nutrition as to be of 
better health, that I should hesitate to quote it, 
only that it has behind it the authority of such 
distinguished scientists as Galton and Pearson. 
The}^ are both conservative Englishmen, they have 
no theory of their own that they are supporting, 
they have no axe to grind in things social and 
political for the launching of the new theory, they 
are only making observations on the facts pre- 
sented and the data that have been collected. 

Here is another striking example of a check on 
certain tendencies in humanity that apparently 



262 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

nature does not approve of, or to avoid personify- 
ing a process, we had better say are not according 
to nature's laws. The small family does not per- 
petuate itself. It has certain natural disadvan- 
tages that work against it. It gradually disap- 
pears and the races of larger families maintain 
themselves. We need not have had recourse to 
Galton's and Pearson's principle in this matter, 
for we see the results of the small family in 
present-day history. France is decreasing in popu- 
lation. Our own Puritan families are dying out. 
American families generally of more than three 
generations are not perpetuating themselves. 
The teeming fertility of the poor immigrants who 
come to us is, with immigration itself, supplying 
our increase in population. Our nation is, as a 
result, gradually becoming something very differ- 
ent from what our forefathers anticipated. 

What has apparently happened, then, in the 
history of feminine education and influence is 
that, whenever women became occupied with such 
modes of education, or the cultivation of phases 
of feminine influence that took them out of their 
houses, away from family life and far from the 
hearthstone, the particular classes of women who 
thus became interested did not propagate them- 
selves, or propagated themselves to such a limited 
degree that, after a time, their kind disappeared 
to a great extent. The domestic woman with 
tendencies to care much more for her maternal 
duties than for any extra-domiciliary successes 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 263 

propagated herself, raised her children with her 
ideals, cultivated domesticity and consciously or 
unconsciously fostered the mother idea as the 
main feature of woman's life and her principal 
source not only of occupation, but of joy in the 
living, of consolation and of genuine accomplish- 
ment. The tendency, as can readily be seen in our 
own time, of the other class of woman is largely 
to foster, often unconsciously, but of course often 
consciously also, the opposite notions. She talks 
of the slavery of child-raising, the limitations 
of the home woman, the drudgery of domestic 
life, forgetting that life is work and that the only 
happiness in life is to have work that you want to 
do, whatever it may be, but all this talk has its 
inevitable effect upon all but the born mother 
woman, and the result is the fad for public occu- 
pation instead of domestic life. 

It is easy to see what the result of the opposite 
opinion is. Every tendency of the intellectual 
woman so-called is to repress such natural in- 
stincts as lead to the propagation of the race and 
the continuance of her kind. Of course it will be 
said that intellectual women are quite willing to 
have one or two children. First, this is not true 
for a great many of them. Secondly, for those 
who have one or two children losses by death and 
failure to marry in the second generation, because 
of conscious or unconscious discouragements and 
the exaggeration of ideas with regard to the 
danger of maternity, lead often to a complete 



264 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

suppression of the family in the second or third 
generation. 

Apparently the rule of history is that there are 
four or five generations of women interested in 
intellectual things particularly, who follow one 
another in these periods of special feminine educa- 
tion and exertion of influence outside of the home. 
Then there comes a distinct decadence of the 
feminist movement, because of the gradual diminu- 
tion in number of women who are interested in 
such things, and then, while there are always cer- 
tain women who develop great intellectual abilities 
which require a larger stage than the home for 
their display, and while there are always some 
who find an intellectual career or rather make it, 
very little is heard of feminism and women's 
claims. They are satisfied to rule their hus- 
bands, to raise their children, to be saints to their 
sons and elder sisters to their daughters, and the 
feminine world has its simple joys and not much 
fuss about rights. 

It may seem far-fetched thus to appeal to a 
biological check or a great underlying natural law 
in a matter of this kind, but in recent years biology 
has so often been appealed to to justify unsocial 
conditions that its true application needs to be 
pointed out. We have heard, for instance, much 
of the struggle for life and the competition that 
is suj)posed to be inevitable in nature, while all 
the time it has apparently been forgotten that 
there is no struggle for life within the 'species 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 265 

except when there is some disturbance of the 
ordinary order of nature, as in times of famine, 
or when a mother is foraging for her children. 
On the contrary, mutual aid is the rule within the 
species and there is no animal small or large, 
from the ant to the elephant, that does not help 
its kind and has not certain wonderful instincts 
for helpfulness, the origin of which we do not 
know, but which are founded in nature itself. 
Man justifies inhumanity to man by the supposed 
struggle for life, while all the time nature teaches 
us the opposite law. 

Nature's way is that of elimination. Her in- 
terest is the race. She cares very little for the 
individual and guards only her great purpose of 
securing the propagation of the race. Apj^arently 
such intense preoccupation with the intellectual 
life as provides opportunity for serious education, 
for literary work and for the exertion of diffuse 
influence in a community, does not make for the 
propagation of the race or its proper preserva- 
tion. We can see this easily in the world around 
us, in the limited progeny of those who live the 
intellectual or selfish life to the exclusion of racial 
interests. This is opposed to nature's purpose and 
she proceeds to eliminate those who stand in her 
way. This is not done by any cataclysmic process 
but by a law of nature. Those involved in the 
influence disturbing to her purpose eliminate 
themselves. This is as true for indulgence in 
toxic substances that produce certain personal 



266 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

momentary good feelings, as for the more deliber- 
ate avoidance of certain of nature's burdens which 
brings about a certain negative pleasure at least by 
lessening the amount of pain that has to be borne 
and trouble to be endured. To these pains and 
troubles nature has attached some of the best of 
the comj^ensatiohs of life. The domestic joys are 
properly man's highest source of unalloyed pleas- 
ure without remorse. 

Our review of the phases of feminine educa- 
tion and influence would seem to show that there 
has occurred a series of cycles about three cen- 
turies apart in the history of the race, during 
which women become very much occupied with 
things external to their household. Such cycles 
are represented by our own period, that of the 
Renaissance in the sixteenth century, that of the 
university period in the thirteenth century, and 
then that at Charlemagne's court earlier, though 
the barbaric conditions following the migration of 
nations probably did not allow a natural expres- 
sion of the tendencies at this time. Earlier in 
history, in the first century before Christ and 
just after and in the fourth century before Christ 
in Greece, there had been, as we have pointed 
out, such cycles. During the intervening cen- 
turies there is a negative phase in the movement, 
so that feminism, under which is understood 
woman's expression of herself outside of her home 
and the exertion of her influence apart from her 
family and inimediate friends, is very little in 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 267 

evidence. During these times the domestic woman 
reasserts herself. During the positive phases 
of the movement she continues to have her chil- 
dren, the feminists do not, or at least not to the 
same extent. They and their kind are gradu- 
ally eliminated, at least to a great degree, and so 
the negative phase comes on. 

This is not an argument and is not meant as 
such. It is meant to be a scientific reading of the 
meaning of certain phases of the history of the 
race as they can be studied. I would be the 
last in the world to think that I could influence 
present-day activities by any such indications of 
a great law in the history of the race that takes 
three centuries from phase to phase. After all, 
who cares for a law that does not affect our gen- 
eration, but at most the third and fourth succeed- 
ing generations, and the manifestation of whose 
phenomena can only be recognized in three-century 
periods ? 

What I have tried to do is to point out just 
what are the cycles of feminine influence and 
education in the world's history, and then to 
work out the reasons why, quite contrary to what 
might be expected, these phases have not con- 
tinued, but are interrupted by periods of utter 
decadence of feminine influence or interest in 
public Hfe and education. Perhaps in our time 
we are going to change all that. That is the 
feeling that we are prone to have. Others may 
have made progress and forgotten about it, or 



268 FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 

may have made mistakes and been eliminated 
for them, but we are so consciously active in our 
affairs that we cannot think of ourselves as likely 
to suffer the fate of our predecessors. There is 
much of that feeling abroad in the present day, 
there has always been much of that feehng abroad 
in every other day, for each succeeding genera- 
tion in its turn is perfectly sure that what it is 
doing means more than ever before, though it can 
see very clearly the mistakes made by its pred- 
ecessors. It is somewhat Hke our feeling to- 
wards other persons and their accomplishments in 
life as compared to our own. Most of us are 
quite sure that whatever we are doing is quite 
significant, though we can see plainly that what 
most of our friends are doing, or are trying to do, 
is altogether trivial and insignificant. 

In recent years we have come to realize more 
and more how much history needs to be studied 
in the light of biology. The decadence of Greece 
was probably due, to a great extent, to the bring- 
ing back by Alexander's conquering soldiers of 
malaria from the Orient, and thus the vanquished 
proved the ruin of their conquerors. The great 
plagues of the olden time which sometimes car- 
ried away nearly one-half the human race in a 
single visitation, were due to insect pests of vari- 
ous kinds, which all unknown to men conveyed the 
disease and diffused it widely. It will not be 
easy always to read the lessons of biology in his- 
tory aright. Whether I have done so for you 



FEMININE EDUCATION AND INFLUENCE 269 

or not, in this matter of the history of feminism, 
I cannot tell. The story, however, has been in- 
teresting to work out, and I do not think that 
its conclusions have ever been j^i'esented to the 
public in quite this form before. They are now 
presented not with the idea that they should be 
accepted as absolute, but for the criticism and 
consideration of those who are most vitally inter- 
ested and who want to know^ all that can be 
known about the conditions surrounding woman's 
influence in the world and her place for good in 
the history of the race. 



THE CHURCH AND FEMININE 
EDUCATION 



" It is your duty to see that your daughter loves study 
and work, securing this by the promise of rewards or some 
other means of emulation. Above all you must take care 
not to give her disgust for study for fear that this may 
continue as she grows older. Let her not learn in her 
childhood what she should unlearn later in life." — Letter of 
St. Jerome to Leta, the wife of Toxolus, the son of St. 
Paula. 

" The sum of education is right training in the nursery. 
The soul of the child in his play should be trained to that 
sort of excellence in which, when he grows up to man- 
hood, he will have to be perfected." — Plato, Laws 
(Jowett), Vol. IV, p. 174. Scribner, 1902. 

" The minds of children arc most of all influenced bj" 
the training they receive at home." — Pope Leo XIII. 



THE CHURCH AND FEMININE 
EDUCATION * 

Lady Bachelors: I have had frequent occa- 
sions to address all sorts of bachelors on their 
graduation, of science and arts and letters and 
pedagogy, but this is my first opportunity to 
address ladies crowned, at least symbolically, with 
the laurel berries of the bachelorhood in art. We 
are apt to think of young ladies rather as masters 
of arts innumerable, and as needing no degree to 
attest their abilities. While I am glad, indeed, to 
address you as lady bachelors I do so with the 
fondest hope that you will all proceed to further 
degrees either academic or domestic and not re- 
main in that nondescript class of bachelor-maids. 

I should like to be able to tell you how much 
pleasure it gives me to have the privilege of 
addressing you on this Fiftieth Anniversary of 
the Foundation of St. Elizabeth's. There is an 
apt illustration of the Communion of Saints in 
your title as a college. Founded in honor of that 
noble, saintly American woman, Elizabeth Seton, 

* The material for this address was gathered originally for the 
normal courses on the History of Education for many of the teaching 
sisterhoods in this country. In its present form it was the address to 
the graduates of St. Elizabeth's College. Convent Station, N. J., on 
the occasion of the celebration of the jubilee of the foundation of its 
teaching work. 

373 



274 CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION 

and yet called particularly after that Saint Eliza- 
beth whom the Mother of the Lord set out to 
visit as the first act of her Motherhood of the 
Church, there always rises in my mind besides, the 
thought of that other Saint Elizabeth whom the 
Germans delight to call the dear Saint Elizabeth, 
who, though she died when she was scarcely 
twenty-four, has left a name undying in the an- 
nals of helpfulness for others. 

This St. Elizabeth, whose name I recall with 
special willingness now that I see you ready to 
go out to do your world's work, lived in the 
midst of what has been until quite recent years 
the despised Middle Ages, out of which as little 
good might be expected as out of Nazareth in the 
olden time, yet she so stamped her personality on 
the world of her day that now the after-time, 
neglectful, as a rule, of the individual, so careless 
even of the world's (supposed) great ones, will not 
willingly let her name die. She is still with us 
as a great living force. They read a sketch of 
her life, I have heard, at the meeting of the 
Neighborhood House in New York within the 
last few months, as an incentive to that devotion 
to the needy that characterized her. She was a 
woman who thought not at all of herself, but all 
of others. As a consequence, mankind in its bet- 
ter moods has never ceased to turn to her. Evi- 
dently the formula for being remembered is to 
forget yourself. I am sure, however, that that 
has been brought home to you so well during your 



CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION 275 

years at St. Elizabeth's that it would, indeed, be 
bringing coals to Newcastle for me to say any- 
thing about it in the few minutes I have to talk to 
you. 

What I have chosen to say to you refers to that 
higher Catholic education for women of which 
you are now going out as the representatives. I 
do it all the more readily because, through the 
kindness of your beloved teachers, I have had 
the i3rivilege of co-operating a little in that 
education, for I appreciate that privilege very 
much. 

Apparently a good many people cherish the 
idea that the Catholic Church is opposed to 
feminine education, or at least to the higher edu- 
cation of women as we know it now, and that in 
the past her influence has been constantly and 
consistently exerted against any development of 
this phase of human accomplishment. In the 
liturgy of the Church women are usually spoken 
of as the devout female sex, and it is supposed 
that the one effort of the Church itself, the un- 
erring purpose of ecclesiastical authorities, was to 
prevent women from becoming learned lest they 
should lose something of their devoutness. Ap- 
parently it is forgotten that some of the greatest 
devotees in the Church, the saintly women who 
were held up to the admiration and emulation of 
their sisters in the after-time, women like St. 
Catherine of Sienna, St. Angela Merici, St. Jane 
Frances De Chantal and, above all, St. Teresa, 



276 CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION 

were eminently intellectual women as well as 
models of devotion. 

This same idea as to the Church deliberately 
fostering ignorance has been quite common in the 
writings of certain types of historians with re- 
gard to other departments of education, and those 
of us who are interested in the history of medi- 
cine have been rather surprised to be told that, 
because the Church wanted to keep people in 
readiness to look to Masses and prayers and relics 
and shrines for the cure of their ailments, — and, 
of course, pay for the privilege of taking advan- 
tage of these, — the development of medicine was 
discouraged, the people were kept in ignorance 
and all progress in scientific knowledge was ham- 
pered. It is, indeed, amusing to hear this when 
one knows that for seven centuries the greatest 
contributors to medical science have been the 
Papal physicians, deliberately called to Rome, 
many of them, because they were the great medi- 
cal scientists of their day, and the Popes would 
have no others near. For centuries the Papal 
Medical School was the finest in the world for 
the original research done there, and Bologna at 
the height of its fame was in the Papal States. 

With so many other presumptions with regard 
to the position of the Church towards education, 
it is not surprising that there should be a com- 
plete misunderstanding of her attitude toward 
feminine education, an absolute ignoring of the 
realities of the history of education, which show 



CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION 277 

exactly the opposite of anything like opposition 
to be true. I have had a good deal to do in 
laboring at least to correct man}^ false ideas with 
regard to the history of education, and, above all, 
with what concerns supposed Church opposition 
to various phases of educational advance. I know 
no presumption of opposition on the part of the 
Church to education that is so groundless, how- 
ever, as that which would insist that it is onl}" 
now with what people are pleased to call the 
breaking up of Church influence generally, so 
that even the Catholic Church has to bow, though 
unwillingly, to the spirit of the times and to 
modern progress, that feminine education is re- 
ceiving its due share of attention. Most people 
seem to be quite sure that the first serious de- 
velopment of opportunities for the higher educa- 
tion of women came in our time. They presume 
that never before has there been anything worth 
while talking about in this matter. Just inasmuch 
as they do they are completely perverting the 
realities of the history of education, which are in 
this matter particularly interesting and by no 
means lacking in detail. 

Whenever there is any question of Church in- 
fluence in education, or of the spirit of the Church 
with regard to education, those who wish to talk 
knowingly of the subject should turn to the 
period in which the Church was a predominant 
factor in human affairs throughout Europe. This 
is, as is well known, the thirteenth century. The 



278 CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION 

Pope who was on the throne at the beginning of 
this century, Innocent III, is famous in history 
for having set down kings from their thrones, 
dictated many modifications of poHtical pohcy 
to the countries of Europe whenever secular 
governments were violating certain great prin- 
ciples of justice, and in general, was looked up to 
as the most powerful of rulers in temporal as 
well as in spiritual affairs. A typical example of 
the place occupied by the Church is to be seen 
when Philip Augustus of France repudiated his 
lawful wife to marry another. Pope Innocent 
set himself sternly against the injustice, and the 
proud French King, at the time one of the most 
powerful sovereigns of Europe, had to take back 
the neglected wife from the Scandinavian coun- 
tries, the distance and weakness of whose relatives 
would seem to make it so easy for a determined 
monarch to put her aside. When King John in 
England violated the rights of his people, Inno- 
cent put the country under an Interdict, released 
John's subjects from their allegiance and promptly 
brought the shifty Plantagenet to terms. The 
Pope at the end of the century, the great Boni- 
face VIII, was scarcely less assertive of the rights 
of the Church and of the Papacy than the first of 
the thirteenth-century Pontiffs. While he was 
not so successful as his great predecessor in main- 
taining his rights, the poHcy of the Church evi- 
dently had not changed. Most of the Popes of 
the interval wielded an immense influence for good 



CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION 279 

that was felt in every sphere of hfe in Europe 
in their time. 

Now it is with regard to this period that it is 
fair to ask the question, What was the attitude of 
the Church toward education? Owing to her ac- 
knowledged supremac)^ in spiritual matters and 
the extension of the spiritual authority even over 
the temporal authorities whenever the essential 
principles of ethics or any question of morals was 
concerned, the Church could absolutely dictate the 
educational policy of Europe. Now, this is the 
century when the universities arose and received 
their most magnificent development. The great 
Lateran Council, held at the beginning of the 
century, required every bishop to establish pro- 
fessorships equivalent to what we now call a col- 
lege in connection with his cathedral. The metro- 
politan archbishops were expected to develop uni- 
versity courses in connection with their colleges. 
Everywhere, then, in Europe universities arose, 
and there was the liveliest appreciation and the 
most ardent enthusiasm for education, so that not 
only were ample opportunities provided, but these 
were taken gloriously and the culture of modern 
Europe awoke and bloomed wonderfully. 

Some idea of the extension of university op- 
portunities can be judged from the fact that, 
according to the best and most conservative 
statistics available, there were more students at the 
universities of Oxford and Cambridge to the popu- 
lation of the England of that day, than there are 



280 CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION 

to the population of even such an educationally 
well provided city as Greater New York in the 
present year of grace 1910. This seems astound- 
ing to our modern ideas, but it is absolutely true 
if there is any truth in history. The statistics 
are provided by men who are not at all favorable 
to Catholic education or the Church's influence 
for education. At this same time there were 
probably more than 1.5,000 students at the Uni- 
versity of Bologna, and almost beyond a doubt 
20,000 at the University of Paris. We have not 
reached such figures for university attendance 
again, even down to the present. Students came 
from all over the world to these universities, but 
more than twenty other universities were founded 
throughout Europe in this century. The popula- 
tion was very scanty compared to what it is at 
the present time; there were probably not more 
than 25,000,000 of peoj^le on the whole continent. 
England had less than 3,000,000 of people and, 
as we know very well by the census made before 
the coming of the Armada, had only slightly more 
than 4,000,000 even in Elizabeth's time, some two 
centuries later. 

Here is abundant evidence of the attitude of the 
Church towards education. Now comes the ques- 
tion for us. What about feminine education at the 
time of this great new awakening of educational 
purpose throughout Europe? If we can find no 
trace of it, then are we justified in saying that 
if the Church did not oppose, at least she did not 



CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION 281 

favor the higher education for women. Let us see 
what we find. The first university in our modern 
sense of the word came into existence down at 
Salerno around the great medical school which 
had existed there for several centuries. Prob- 
ably the most interesting feature of the teaching 
at Salerno is the fact that the department of the 
diseases of women in the great medical school was 
in charge of women professors for several cen- 
turies, and we have the books they wrote on this 
subject, and know much of the position they occu- 
pied. The most distinguished of them, Trotula, 
left us a text-book on her subject which con- 
tained many interesting details of the medicine 
of the period, and we know of her that she was 
the wife of one professor of medicine at Salerno 
and the mother of another. She was the foundress 
of what was called the school of Salernitan women 
physicians, using the word school in the same 
sense in which it is employed when we talk of a 
school of painters. 

This is all the more interesting because the 
University of Salerno was mainly under monastic 
influence. Originall}^ the schools in connection 
with the school of medicine were founded from 
the great Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino 
not far away. The first great teacher of medi- 
cine at Salerno, Constantine Africanus, whose 
influence was dominant in his own time and con- 
tinued afterwards through his writings, became a 
Benedictine monk in his early middle age. The 



282 CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION 

preparatory schools for the medical courses at 
Salerno were largely in the hands of the Bene- 
dictines. The university itself was under the 
influence of the Archbishop of Salerno more than 
any other, and the one who did most for it, the 
great Alphanus, had been a Benedictine monk. 
Ordinarily this would be presumed to preclude 
any possibility of the development of a great 
phase of education for women, and especially pro- 
fessional education for women at the University 
of Salerno. Just the contrary happened. The 
wise monks, who knew human life and appreciated 
its difficulties, recognized the necessity, or at least 
the advisability, for women as medical attendants 
on women and children, and so the first great 
modern school of medicine, mainly under monastic 
influence, had the department of women's dis- 
eases in the hands of women themselves. 

In Naples women were allowed to practise 
medicine, and we have some of the licenses which 
show the formal permission granted by the gov- 
ernment in this matter. An almost exactly simi- 
lar state of affairs to that thus seen at Salerno 
developed at Bologna, only there the university 
was founded round the law school, and the first 
women students were in that school. When 
Irnerius established his great lectureship of Ro- 
man Law at Bologna, to which students were 
attracted from all over Europe, he seems to have 
seen no objection to allow women to attend his 
courses, and we have the names of his daughter 



CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION 283 

and several other women who reached distinction 
in the law school. As the other departments of 
the University of Bologna developed we find 
women as students and teachers in these. One 
of the assistants to the first great professor of 
anatomy at Bologna, Mondino, whose text-book 
of anatomy was used in the schools for two cen- 
turies after this time, was a young woman, Ales- 
sandra Giliani. It is to her that we owe an early 
method for the injection of- bodies in such a way 
as to preserve them, and she also varnished and 
colored them so that the deterrent work of dis- 
section would not have to be carried on to such an 
extent as before, 3'et the actual human tissues 
might be used for demonstrating purposes. 

As the result of the traditions in feminine 
education thus established women continued to 
enjoy abundant opportunities at the universities 
of Italy, and there is not a single century since 
the thirteenth when there have not been some dis- 
tinguished women professors at the Italian uni- 
versities. Nearly five centuries after the youth- 
ful assistant in anatomy of whom we have spoken, 
whose invention meant so much for making the 
study of medicine less deterrent and dangerous, 
came Madame Manzolini, who invented the method 
of making wax- models of human tissues so that 
these might be studied for anatomical purposes. 
Made in the natural colors, these were eminently 
helpful. In the meantime many women pro- 
fessors of many subjects had come and gone at 



284 CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION 

the Italian universities. In the thirteenth century 
there was a great teacher of mathematics who was 
so young and handsome that, in order not to dis- 
turb the minds of her students, she lectured from 
behind a curtain. It is evident that the educated 
women of the Middle Ages could be as modest as 
they were intelligent and thoughtful of others, 
quite as much as if they had devoted their lives 
to gentle charity and not to the higher education. 
Women physicians, educators, mathematicians, 
professors of literature, astronomers, all these are 
to be found at the universities of Italy while the 
Church and the ecclesiastics were the dominating 
influences in these universities. 

Unfortunately the spread of this feminine edu- 
cational movement from Italy to the west of Eu- 
rope was disturbed by the Heloise and Abelard 
incident at the University of Paris, and as all the 
western universities owe their origin to Paris, 
they took the tradition created there after Abe- 
lard's time, that women should not be allowed to 
enter the university. When, however, three cen- 
turies later, the Renaissance brought in the new 
learning, the schools of humanism independent of 
the universities admitted women on absolute terms 
of equality with men, and some of the women 
became the distinguished scholars of the time. 
The Church's influence is plainly to be seen in 
this, and the women took part in plays given in 
Greek and classic Latin before the cardinals and 
prominent ecclesiastics, and everywhere the feel- 



CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION 285 

ing developed that, if women wanted to have the 
higher education of the humanities or, as it was 
then called, the New Learning, they should have 
it. This feminine educational movement spread 
all over Europe. Anne of Bretagne organized a 
school at the French Court for the women of the 
court, and such women as JNIary Queen of Scots, 
Margaret of Navarre, Renee of Anjou, Louise 
La Cordiere are a few of the French women of 
the Renaissance who attained distinction for 
broad culture and education at this time. 

Spain, too, had its women of the Renaissance. 
One of the first of them was Isabella of Castile, 
whose assistance to Columbus was no mere acci- 
dent, nor due so much to personal influence ex- 
erted on her, as to her own broad interest in the 
things of the mind in her time. Her daughter 
Catherine, who became Queen of England, was 
deeply educated, while her daughter. Queen Mary 
of England, knew the classics and especially 
Latin very well. During her time in England 
many of the nobility of the higher classes were dis- 
tinguished for education. Lady Jane Grey pre- 
ferred to study Greek to going to balls and routs, 
and sacrificed hunting parties for her lessons un- 
der Roger Ascham, in the great Greek authors. 
Queen Elizabeth knew Greek and Latin very well. 
The famous Countess of Arundell at this time 
was a distinguished scholar. Margaret More is 
a bright example of opportunities for the 4iigher 
education given and taken in the lower classes of 



286 CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION 

the nobility of the England of her time. One 
thing we can be sure of in the England of that 
time, if the Queen and the highest nobility were 
interested in education and devoted their time to 
it so sedulously and successfully, then without 
doubt those beneath them in rank did so like- 
wise. The upper classes are not alone imitated in 
things unworthy, but also in what is best if they 
only provide the good example. 

To any one who knows the history of the 
Church, however, these incidents in feminine edu- 
cation will not be surprising. Every time, as a 
rule, that there has been a great new awakening 
in education, women, too, have demanded the 
right to have their share in it, and the Church, 
far from discouraging, has always helped to pro- 
vide, educational opportunities. When in the 
ninth century Charlemagne reorganized the edu- 
cation of Europe, or, at least, reinstituted it for 
his people, the women of the Palace had their op- 
portunities to attend the Palace school as well as 
the men. That Palace school was a very wonder- 
ful travelling university, wandering wherever the 
Court went. It was at Aix, it was probably at 
Paris for a time; when Charlemagne went down 
to Italy it went with him and seems to have held 
some sessions even while he was in Rome; there 
is a tradition of its existence while he stayed one 
winter in Verona. Though the teachers in it 
were monks, for Charlemagne and Alfred, the 
great, broad-minded rulers, who did so much for 



CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION 287 

their people, had no illusions about the high place 
that the monks held in life in their time, women 
were taught at the schools as well as men. Char- 
lemagne and Alfred were in the best possible posi- 
tion to know who were the best teachers in their 
time, and they turned with confidence to the 
monks. People generally, and, above all, their 
great rulers, knew nothing of the condemnation 
of the monks in the Dark Ages which came a 
thousand years after their time, from people who 
knew nothing about them and who had even less 
sympathy with them. They both knew them and 
sympathized with all they were doing, therefore 
their cordial encouragement of them. Their atti- 
tude was eminently justified by the fact that the 
monks were broad enough, in spite of their mo- 
nastic habits and their supposed lack of apprecia- 
tion for women, to take up to a great extent even 
the teaching of women. There are letters from 
the women of the court of Charlemagne written 
to Alcuin and to other teachers of the time, which 
show how interested were the women in the school 
work. 

This is not surprising if we recall that, when 
Benedict founded the monks of the west, who 
were to provide the homes where culture was- to 
be maintained and the classics preserved for us 
and education gradually diffused, his sister St. 
Scholastica did the same thing for the women as 
her brother was doing for the men. Any one who 
knows the story of the Benedictine convents for 



288 CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION 

women and the books there produced, plays, 
stories, even works on medicine and other sci- 
ences, will realize how much was accomplished 
for the higher education of women in these in- 
stitutions in unpromising times. The women who 
wanted to follow the intellectual life were given 
the opportunity and many of them did excellent 
work^ Within the last year I have written and 
published sketches of the lives of St. Hildegarde, 
who wrote books on medicine in the twelfth cen- 
tury, and of Hroswitha, the nun of Gandersheim, 
who wrote Latin comedies in imitation of Terence 
in the tenth century. These serious literary and 
scientific writings by women in what is usually 
presumed to be the darkest period of the so-called 
Dark Ages, and preserved for us out of the wreck 
and ruin that came down on nearly everything 
produced in those times, shows us very clearly how 
much more than we have been accustomed to think 
these women of the Middle Ages were interested 
in the intellectual life. Books are written only 
when there are readers and appreciation for them, 
and the interest of contemporaries and the hope of 
future interest as an incentive. 

Of course, even before the foundation of the 
Benedictines we have a great living example of the 
encouragement of the Church for the higher edu- 
cation of women. It came at a time and under 
circumstances that furnish abundant evidence of 
how much the Church appreciates and is ready to 
encourage education and how precious she realizes 



CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION 289 

it is for her children. When the first nation was 
converted as a whole to Christianity, when the 
Irish people came over under the Apostolic Pat- 
rick's wonderful missionary zeal, the first thing 
that was done in this first Christian nation was to 
found schools. Ireland became the Island of 
Saints and of Scholars. While the barbarians 
had overrun Europe and destroyed the schools 
there, Ireland became the home of the best teach- 
ers in the world and men flocked to her from all 
over Europe. 

These schools, however, were not reserved for 
the men, but abundant opportunities were also af- 
forded women for scholarship and for culture of 
every kind. Only second in importance to St. 
Patrick's great school at Armagh during the 
first century in the history of Ireland as a Chris- 
tian nation was St. Brigid's school at Kildare. 
We know from Giraldus Cambrensis, now better 
known as Gerald the Welshman, that, in his 
travels in Ireland centuries afterwards, but before 
the destruction of Kildare, he saw many wonder- 
ful evidences of the intellectual life of that in- 
stitution. Above all, he saw a famous copy of 
the Holy Scripture so beautifully illuminated that 
he thought it the finest book in the world. His 
description would show us that if this copy of 
the Scriptures which Gerald saAv was not the 
book of Kells as some have ventured to suggest, 
it was at least a copy not unlike that famous 
illuminated volume which is, perhaps, the most 



290 CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION 

beautiful book that ever came from the hand of 
man. The arts and the crafts evidently were 
studied and practised as well as book-learning at 
Kildare, and Brigid's influence brought to her at 
her college of Kildare, literally thousands of the 
daughters of the nobility of Ireland, of England 
and of portions of the Continent, attracted by 
her sanctity and her scholarship and the wonder- 
ful intellectual and artistic work that was being 
accomplished there. 

With these facts in mind it is easy to see that 
the Church, far from opposing in any way the 
higher education for women, has not only en- 
couraged but actually patronized it whenever 
there is a demand for it on the part of any genera- 
tion in history. Feminine education comes and 
goes, so though in less markedly cyclical fashion 
does masculine education. Just what the law 
behind these cycles is we do not know as yet. One 
thing is sure, now that another cycle of interest 
has come to feminine education in the world, the 
Church is not only willing but anxious to give her 
children the benefit of it, and the growth of the 
higher education among Catholics for Catholic 
young women in America in the last decade is 
the best evidence of this. Our teaching Sister- 
hoods in this country have nobly lifted themselves 
up to the occasion demanded, and we may well 
be proud of our Catholic colleges for women. 
Personally I know what is being done at some 
half a dozen of them, and I have no hesitation 



CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION 291 

in saying that they are giving a better, solider, 
though perhaps, a less showy education than their 
secular rivals. Of your work at St. Elizabeth's 
I have had such personal information as makes 
me realize how thorough are the efforts to pro- 
vide every possible opportunity for higher femi- 
nine education and how successful they are. 

Only less absurd than the notion that the 
Church is in any way opposed to feminine educa- 
tion is the thought that seems to be in many peo- 
ple's minds in our day, that the Church would 
prefer to keep woman in the background and 
does not want her to do great influential things 
when those are demanded of her. The feeling 
seems to be that only modern evolution has 
brought such opportunities for women to exert 
the precious humanitarian influence that is some- 
times possible for her. How much those who talk 
thus forget the history of the Church if they ever 
knew it, but also of feminine influence in the 
world, is very clear from even a short resume of 
feminine achievements in Christian times. When- 
ever there has been a great movement in the 
Church that meant much for the men and women 
of a time, beside the man who initiated it, if she 
was not, indeed, the initiator herself, stood a 
great woman only a little less significant in in- 
fluence, as a rule, and sometimes even greater 
than he. In the conversion of the first people to 
Christianity, beside St. Patrick stood St. Brigid. 
In the foundation of the monks of the west that 



292 CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION 

great institution that meant so much for the 
Church and for Europe, beside St. Benedict 
stood St. Scholastica, his sister, doing and organiz- 
ing for the women of her time and succeeding 
generations, what her brother did for the men. 
When, in the newer disjiensation of the founda- 
tion of the Mendicant Rehgious Orders, St. 
Francis came to bring a great new message to 
the world, beside him and only a little less in- 
fluential than he in his lifetime, and saving his 
work for its genuine mission after his death, came 
St. Clare. When the tide of the religious revolt 
spreading down from Germany, was pushed back 
in Spain, beside St. Teresa, for here the greater 
protagonist of the movement was a woman, stood 
St. John of God. When St. Francis De Sales 
came to do his great work for education and for 
the uplift of the better classes, beside him and 
scarcely less influential than he in every way, 
was St. Jane Frances De Chantal. In the great 
new organization of modern charity under St. 
Vincent De Paul beside that wonderful friend 
of the poor whose work is the underlying impulse 
of all modern organized charity in the best sense 
of that much abused term, stood the modest and 
humble but strongly beautiful woman, the found- 
ress of the Sisters of Charity, Madame Le Gras. 
Even in the nineteenth century with the newer 
organizations of education demanded by changed 
conditions, when such foundations as those of the 
Sacred Heart and of the Sisters of Notre Dame 



CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION 293 

came into existence, men and women co-operated 
in these works and only now are we realizing to 
the full the sanctity of such women as Blessed 
Madame Barat or the Venerable Julie Billiart 
and their adviser and friend, Father Varin, the 
Jesuit. 

Nor was it only in connection with work accom- 
plished by men or initiated by them that we find 
women doing great work. It must not be for- 
gotten that many of the religious orders which 
are accomplishing fine work in every line of help- 
ful endeavor, often hundreds of years after their 
foundations, in conditions very different from 
those in which they were established, originated in 
the minds of women and had their constitutions 
worked out practically without any help from 
men, and often, indeed, against the judgment 
of men. The world of our day is not prone to 
appreciate at its proper worth these great works 
of women who took for an aim in life unselfish 
purpose, rather than any more personal ambi- 
tion. It must not be forgotten, then, that the 
first settlement worker of modern times, the dear 
St. Elizabeth of Hungary, is one of the great in- 
fluences that will never die. The cathedral erected 
in her honor within a few years after her death 
is the most beautiful monument to woman any- 
where in the world. What St. Elizabeth was to 
the thirteenth century, St. Catherine of Sienna 
was to the fourteenth. Without her influence and 
her place in it, it would be impossible to under- 



294 CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION 

stand the history of that century, though some- 
times history has been written without a mention 
of her. In the fifteenth century came Joan of 
Arc, in the sixteenth and seventeenth some of the 
brave women who founded great humanitarian 
works in connection with the early missionaries in 
this country. Everywhere in history you find 
Cathohc women accomphshing great things. 

After all, this is only what is to be anticipated 
from what is symbolized and prefigured in the 
story of the foundation of the Church. When the 
Son of God came as the Redeemer of Mankind, 
beside Him in His life and mission, the highest 
of mortals in the influence that she was to have 
over all succeeding generations, stood the Woman, 
whose seed was to crush the serpent's head, the 
Mother from whom He had chosen to take His 
human flesh. The Mother of the Messiah became 
the Mother of the infant Church and the Mother 
of all Christians ever since. Surely this was 
given for a sign not to be contradicted in the 
after-time. As the Mother beside the Son, so 
was woman ever to stand as the most precious 
influence in the work of Christianity. As the 
great scheme of redemption was dependent on her 
consent, so ever was woman to be God's greatest 
auxiliary in the accomplishment of good for 
humanity. 

You can understand, then, that when I say to 
you graduates of St. Elizabeth's, go out and ful- 
fil your missions, whatever they may be, I mean 



CHURCH AND FEMININE EDUCATION 295 

that you shall be ready to take up any work for 
which your education and your training fit you, 
and God grant it may bring you su(^i opportuni- 
ties for good as have been exemplified in the lives 
of so many Catholic women all down the ages. 
There is nothing more than this that I could 
sa)^ to you. Our mother Church, far from want- 
ing to keep women in the background, has always 
accorded them full and equal rights in their own 
domains and, above all, has given them absolute 
independence in the religious organizations a$ 
far as that is compatible with effective co-opera- 
tion in good work. You may be sure, then, that 
anj^ work that you find to do worthy of you, 
and that you take up whole-heartedly, will have 
not only her blessing but you shall find every 
encouragement. The glorious examples of the 
Catholic women of the past, educated, intellectual 
women, some of whom like St. Teresa, St. Cath- 
erine of Sienna, St. Jane Frances De Chantal 
and St. Brigid are high among the greatest in- 
tellectual women that ever lived, will be your 
guiding stars, and if you keep them in mind you 
shall not go wrong. Remember that we expect 
much and we have a right to expect much of the 
women graduates of our Catholic Women's Col- 
leges — you have a great mission, you have put 
your hand to the plow, do not look back, — on- 
ward and upward. God's in his world and all's 
well. Only our co-operation is needed. 



ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 



" Libenter homines id quod volunt credunt." — C^sae, 

Bell. Gall., Hi: 8. 

[Men believe readily what they want to.] 

" Great additions have of late been made to our knowl- 
edge of the past ; the long conspiracy against the revela- 
tion of truth has gradually given away. ... It has become 
impossible for the historical writer of the present age to 
trust without reserve even to the most respected secondary 
authorities. The honest student finds himself continually 
deserted, retarded, misled by the classics of historical lit- 
erature." — Preface of " Cambridge Modern History.^* 



ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION * 

Here in the United States we have been some- 
what amazingly ignorant of our brother Ameri- 
cans of Mexico and of South America. Our 
ignorance has been so complete as to have the 
usual result of quite intolerant bigotry with re- 
gard to the significance of what was being done 
in these Spanish-American countries. A distin- 
guished ex-president of one of our American uni- 
versities said in his autobiography, that a favorite 
maxim of his for his own guidance was, " The 
man I don't like is the man I don't know." If we 
only know enough about people, we always find 
out quite enough about them that is admirable to 
make us like them. Whenever we are tempted to 
conclude that somebody is hopelessly insignificant 
then what we need to correct is our judgment by 
better knowledge of them. For most Americans, 
for we have arrogated to ourselves the title of 
Americans to the exclusion of any possible share 

* The material for this address was collected for a lecture on the 
History of Education for the Sisters of Charity of Mount St. Vin- 
cent's, New York, and the Sacred Heart Academy, Kenwood, Albany, 
N. Y. Subsequently it was developed for an address to the parochial 
school teachers of New Orleans and for the summer normal courses 
of St. Mary's College, South Bend, Ind., and St. Mary's College, 
Monroe, Mich, Very nearly in its present form the address was 
delivered in a course at Boston College in the spring of 1910. 

299 



300 ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

in it of our South American brethren, Spanish 
America has been so hopelessly backward, so out 
of all comparison with ourselves, as to be quite 
undeserving of our notice unless it be for pro- 
found deprecation. 

Fortunately for us in recent years our knowl- 
edge of Spanish America has become larger and 
deeper and more genuine, and as a consequence 
there has been less assumption of knowledge 
founded on ignorance. Every gain in knowledge 
of Spanish America has raised Spanish America 
and her peoples in our estimation. Not long since 
at a public dinner the president of a great Ameri- 
can university said, " We have only just discov- 
ered Spanish America." This is literally true. 
We have thought that we knew much about it, 
and that that much showed us how little deserving 
of our attention was Spanish America, while all 
the while a precious mine of information with 
regard to the beginnings of the history of educa- 
tion, of literature, of culture, nay, even of phys- 
ical science on this continent, remained to be 
studied in these countries and not our own. Our 
scholars are now engaged in bringing together the 
materials out of which a real history of Spanish 
America can be constructed for their fellow- 
Americans of the North, and their surprise when 
it is placed before them is likely to be supreme. 
In the meantime there are some phases of this in- 
formation that, I think, it will be interesting to 
bring together for you. 



ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 301 

Josh Billings, writing as " Uncle Esek " in the 
Century Magazine some twenty-five years ago, 
made use of an expression which deserves to be 
frequently recalled. He said: " It is not so much 
the ignorance of mankind that makes them ridicu- 
lous as the knowin' so many things that ain't 
so." We have a very typical illustration of the 
wisdom of this fine old saw in the history of 
education here in America as it is being developed 
by scholarly historical research at the present 
time. The consultation of original documents and 
of first-hand authorities in the history of Spanish- 
American education has fairly worked a revolu- 
tion in the ideas formerly held on this subject. 
The new developments bring out very forcibly 
how supremely necessary it is to know something 
definite about a subject before writing about it, 
and yet how many intelligent and supposedly edu- 
cated men continue to talk about things with an 
assumption of knowledge when they know nothing 
at aW about them. 

Catholics are supposed by the generality of, 
Americans to have come late into the field of edu- 
cation in this country. Whatever there is of 
education on this continent is ordinarily supposed 
to be due entirely to the efforts of what has been 
called the Anglo-Saxon element here. At last, 
however, knowledge is growing of what the Catho- 
lic Spaniards did for education in America and 
as a consequence the face of the history of edu- 
cation is being completely changed. Every ad- 



302 ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

vance in history in recent years has made for the 
advantage of the CathoKc Church. Modern his- 
torical methods insist on the consultation of 
original documents and give very little weight to 
the quotation of second-hand authorities. We are 
getting at enduring history as far as that is pos- 
sible, and the real position of the Church is coming 
to light. In no portion of human accomplishment 
is the modification of history more striking than 
with regard to education. There was much more 
education in the past centuries than we have 
thought and the Catholic Church was always an 
important factor in it. Nowhere is this truth 
more striking than with regard to education here 
in America in the Spanish- American countries. 

Professor Edward Gaylord Bourne, professor 
of history at Yale University, wrote the volume 
on Spain in America which constitutes the third 
volume of " The American Nation," a history of 
this country in twenty-seven volumes edited by 
Professor Albert Bushnell Hart, who holds the 
chair of history at Harvard University. Pro- 
fessor Bourne has no illusions with regard to the 
relative value of Anglo-Saxon and Spanish edu- 
cation in this country. In his chapter on " The 
Transmission of European Culture" he says: 
" Early in the eighteenth century the Lima Uni- 
versity (Lima, Peru) counted nearly two thou- 
sand students and numbered about one hundred 
and eighty doctors (in its faculty) in theology, 
civil and canon law, medicine and the arts." Ulloa 



ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 303 

reports that " the university makes a stately ap- 
pearance from without and its inside is decorated 
with suitable ornaments." There were chairs of 
all the sciences and " some of the professors have, 
notwithstanding the vast distance, gained the ap- 
plause of the literati of Europe." " The coming 
of the Jesuits contributed much to the real educa- 
tional work in America. They established col- 
leges, one of which, the little Jesuit college at 
Juli, on Lake Titicaca, became a seat of genuine 
learning." (Bourne.) 

He does not hesitate to emphasize the contrast 
between Spanish America and English America 
with regard to education and culture, and the 
most interesting feature of his comparison is that 
Spanish America surpassed the North completely 
and anticipated by nearly two centuries some of 
the progress that we are so proud of in the nine- 
teenth century. What a startling paragraph, for 
instance, is the following for those who have been 
accustomed to make little of the Church's interest 
in education and to attribute the backwardness of 
South America, as they presumed they knew it, to 
the presence of the Church and her influence 
there. 

" Not all the institutions of learning founded in 
Mexico in the sixteenth century can be enumer- 
ated here, but it is not too much to say that in 
number, range of studies and standard of attain- 
ments by the officers they surpassed anything ex- 
isting in English America until the nineteenth 



304 ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

century. Mexican scholars made distinguished 
achievements in some branches of science, particu- 
larly medicine and surgery, but pre-eminently 
linguistics, history and anthropology. Diction- 
aries and grammars of the native languages and 
histories of the Mexican institutions are an impos- 
ing proof of their scholarly devotion and intel- 
lectual activity. Conspicuous are Toribio de 
Motolinia's ' Historia de las Indias de Nueva 
Espafia,' Duran's ' Historia de las Indias de 
Nueva Espaiia,' but most important of all Saha- 
gun's great work on Mexican life and religion." 
Indeed, it is with regard to science in various 
forms that one finds the most surprising contribu- 
tions from these old-time scholars. While the 
English in America were paying practically no 
attention to science, the Spaniards were deeply 
interested in it. Dr. Chan9a, a physician who had 
been for several years physician-in-ordinary to the 
King and Queen and was looked upon as one of 
the leaders of his profession in Spain, joined 
Columbus' second expedition in order to make 
scientific notes. The little volume that he issued 
as the report of this scientific excursion is a valu- 
able contribution to the science of the time and 
furnishes precious information with regard to 
Indian medicine, Indian customs, their knowledge 
of botany and of metals, certain phases of zoology, 
and the like, that show how wide was the interest 
in science of this Spanish physician of over four 
hundred years ago. 



ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 305 

After reading paragraphs such as Professor 
Bourne has written with regard to education in 
Spanish America, how amusing it is to reflect 
that one of the principal arguments against the 
CathoHc Church has been that she keeps nations 
backward and unprogressive and uneducated — 
and the South American countries have been held 
up derisively and conclusively as horrible examples 
of this. Even we Catholics have been prone to 
take on an apologetic mood with regard to them. 
The teaching of history in English-speaking coun- 
tries has been so untrue to the realities that we 
have accepted the impression that the Spanish- 
American countries were far behind in all the ways 
that were claimed. Now we find that instead of pre- 
senting grounds for apology they are triumphant 
examples of how soon and how energetically the 
Church gets to work at the great problems of edu- 
cation wherever she gains a position of authority 
or even a foothold of influence. Instead of need- 
ing to be ashamed of them, as we have perhaps 
ignorantly been, there is a reason to be deservedly 
proud of them. Their education far outstripped 
our own in all the centuries down to the nine- 
teenth, and the culture of the Spanish- Americans, 
quite a different thing from education, is deeper 
than ours even at the present time. It is hard 
for North America to permit herself to be per- 
suaded of this, but there is no doubt of its abso- 
lute truth. 

It is only since the days of steam that the Eng- 



306 ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

lish-speaking races in America have come to pos- 
sess a certain material progress above that of the 
Spanish- American countries. Bourne says: 

" If we compare Spanish America with the 
United States a hundred years ago we must 
recognize that while in the North there was a 
sounder body politic, a purer social life and a 
more general dissemination of elementary educa- 
tion, yet in Spanish America there were both 
vastly greater wealth and greater poverty, more 
imposing monuments of civilization, such as pub- 
lic buildings, institutions of learning and hospitals, 
more populous and richer cities, a higher attain- 
ment in certain branches of science. No one can 
read Humboldt's account of the City of Mexico 
and its establishments for the promotion of sci- 
ence and the fine arts without realizing that what- 
ever may be the superiorities of the United States 
over Mexico in these respects, they have been 
mostly the gains of the age of steam." 

While we are prone to think that a republican 
form of government is the great foster-mother of 
progress and that whatever development may have 
come in South American countries has been the 
result of the foundation of the South American 
republics. Professor Bourne is not of that opinion 
and is inclined to think that if the Spanish Co- 
lonial Government could have been maintained 
at its best until the coming of the age of steam 
or well on into the nineteenth century, then the 
South American republics would have been serious 



ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 307 

rivals of the United States and have been kept 
from being so hampered as they were by their 
internal political dissensions. His paragraph on 
this matter is so contradictory of ordinary im- 
pressions, here in the United States particularly, 
that it seems worth while calling attention to it 
because it contains that most precious of sugges- 
tions, a thought that is entirely different from any 
that most people have had before. He says: 

" During the first half -century after the appli- 
cation of steam to transportation Mexico weltered 
in domestic turmoils arising out of the crash of 
the old regime. If the rule of Spain could have 
lasted half a century longer, being progressively 
as it was during the reign of Charles III; if a 
succession of such viceroys as Revilla Gigedo, in 
Mexico, and De Croix and De Taboaday Lemos, 
in Peru, could have borne sway in America until 
railroads could have been built, intercolonial inter- 
course ramified and a distinctly Spanish- American 
spirit developed, a great Spanish-American fed- 
eral state might possibly have been created, ca- 
pable of self-defense against Europe, and inviting 
co-operation rather than aggression from the 
neighbor in the North." 

Lima was the great centre for education in 
South America, and Mexico, in Spanish North 
America, was not far at all behind. The tracing 
of the steps of the development of education in 
Mexico emphasizes especially the difference be- 
tween the Spaniards and the Englishmen in their 



308 ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

relation to the Indian. Bishop Zumaraga wanted 
a college for Indians in his bishopric, and it was 
because of this beneficent purpose that the first 
institution for higher education in the New World 
was founded as early as 1535. At that time the 
need for education for the whites was not felt 
so much, since only adults as a rule were in the 
colony, the number of children and growing 
youths being as yet very small. Accordingly, the 
College of Santa Cruz, in Tlaltelolco, one of 
the quarters of the City of Mexico reserved for 
the Indians, was founded under the bishop's pa- 
tronage. Among the faculty were graduates of 
the Universit}^ of Paris and of Salamanca, two of 
the greatest universities of Europe of this time, 
and they had not only the ambition to teach, but 
also to follow out that other purpose of a uni- 
versity — to investigate and write. Among them 
were such eminent scholars as Bernardino de 
Sahagun, the founder of American anthropology, 
and Juan de Torquemada, who is himself a prod- 
uct of Mexican education, whose " Monarquia 
Indiana " is a great storehouse of facts concern- 
ing Mexico before the coming of the whites, and 
precious details with regard to Mexican antiqui- 
ties. 

Knowing this, it is not surprising that the cur- 
riculum was broad and liberal. Besides the ele- 
mentary branches and grammar and rhetoric, in- 
struction was provided in Latin, philosophy, 
Me?iican medicine, music, botany (especially with 



ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 309 

reference to native plants), the zoology of Mexico, 
some principles of agriculture, and the native 
languages. It is not surprising to be told that 
many of the graduates of this college became 
Alcaldes and Governors in the Indian towns, and 
that they did much to spread civilization and cul- 
ture among their compatriots. The English- 
speaking Americans furnished nothing of this 
kind, and our colleges for Indians came only in 
the nineteenth century. It is true that Harvard, 
according to its charter, was " for the education 
of the Indian youth of this country in knowledge 
and godliness," but the Indians were entirely 
neglected and no serious effort was ever made to 
give them any education. It was a son of the 
Puritans who said that his forefathers first fell 
on their knees and then on the aborigines, and the 
difference in the treatment of the Indians by the 
English and the Spaniards is a marked note in all 
their history. 

During the next few years schools were estab- 
lished also for the education of mestizo children, 
that is, of the mixed race who are now called 
Creoles. In fact, in 1536 a fund from the Royal 
Exchequer was given for the teaching of these 
children. Strange as it may seem, for we are apt 
to think that the teaching of girls is a modern 
idea, schools were also established for Indian 
girls. All of these schools continued to flourish, 
and gradually spread beyond the City of Mexico 
itself into the villages of the Indians. As a mat- 



310 ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

ter of fact, wherever a mission was established a 
school was also founded. Every town, Indian 
as well as Spanish, was by law required to have 
its church, hospital and school for teaching In- 
dian children Spanish and the elements of re- 
ligion. The teaching and parish work in the 
Indian villages was in charge of two or more 
friars, as a rule, and was well done. The remains 
of the monasteries with their magnificent Spanish- 
American architecture, are still to be seen in 
many portions of Mexico and of the Spanish ter- 
ritories that have been incorporated with the 
United States, in places where they might be least 
expected, and they show the influence for culture 
and education that gradually extended all over 
the Mexican country. 

In the course of time the necessity for advanced 
teaching for the constantly growing number of 
native whites began to be felt, and so during the 
fifth decade of the sixteenth century a number 
of schools for them came into existence in the City 
of Mexico. The need was felt for some central 
institution. Accordingly, the Spanish Crown was 
petitioned to establish authoritatively a univer- 
sity. Such a step would have been utterly out 
of the question in English America, because the 
Crown was so little interested in colonial affairs. 
In the Spanish country, however, the Crown was 
deeply interested in making the colonists feel that 
though they were at a distance from the centre 
of government, their rulers were interested in 



ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 311 

securing for them, as far as possible, all the op- 
portunities of life at home in Spain. This is so 
different from what is ordinarily presumed to 
have been the attitude of Spain towards its 
colonies as to be quite a surprise for those who 
have depended on old-fashioned history, but there 
can be no doubt of its truth. Accordingly, the 
University of Mexico received its royal charter 
the same year as the University of Lima (1551). 
Mexico was not formally organized as a university 
until 1553. In the light of these dates, it is rather 
amusing to have the Century Dictionary, under 
the word Harvard University, speak of that insti- 
tution as the oldest and largest institution of 
learning in America. It had been preceded by 
almost a century, not only in South America, but 
also in North America. The importance of Har- 
vard was as nothing compared to the universities 
of Lima and Mexico, and indeed for a century 
after its foundation Harvard was scarcely more 
than "a small theological school, with a hundred or 
so of pupils, sometimes having no graduating 
class, practically never graduating more than 
eight or ten pupils, while the two Spanish- 
American universities counted their students by 
the thousand and their annual graduates by the 
hundred. 

The reason for the success of these South 
American universities above that of Harvard is 
to be found in the fact that Harvard's sphere of 
usefulness was extremely limited because of re- 



312 ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

ligious differences and shades of differences. This 
had hamjjered all education in Protestant coun- 
tries very seriously. Professor Paulsen, who holds 
the chair of philosophy at the University of 
Berlin, calls attention to the fact that the Refor- 
mation had anything but the effect of favoring 
education that has often been said. The picture 
that he draws of conditions in Germany a cen- 
tury before the foundation of Harvard would 
serve very well as a lively prototype of the factors 
at work in preventing Harvard from becoming 
such an educational institution as the universities 
of Lima and Mexico so naturally became. He 
says, in " German Universities and University 
Studies": "During this period [after Luther's 
revolt] a more determined effort was made to 
control instruction than at any period before or 
since. The fear of heresy, the extraordinary 
anxiety to keej) instruction well within orthodox 
lines, was not less intense at the Lutheran than at 
the Catholic institutions; perhaps it was even 
more so, because here doctrine was not so well 
established, apostasy was possible in either of 
two directions, toward Catholicism or Calvinism. 
Even the philosophic faculty felt the pressure of 
this demand for correctness of doctrines. Thus 
came about these restrictions within the petty 
states and their narrow-minded established 
churches which well-nigh stifled the intellectual 
life of the German people." 

Because of this and the fact that the attendance 



ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 313 

at the college did not justify it, the school of 
medicine at Harvard was not opened until after 
the Revolution (1783). The law school was not 
opened until 1817. 

This is sometimes spoken of as the earliest law 
school connected with a university on this con- 
tinent, but, of course, only by those who know 
nothing at all about the history of the Spanish- 
American universities. In the Spanish countries 
the chairs in law were established very early; in- 
deed, before those of medicine. Canon law was 
always an important subject in Sj)anish univer- 
sities, and civil law was so closely connected with 
it that it was never neglected. 

When the charter of the University of Lima 
was granted by the Emperor Charles V, in 1551, 
the town was scarcely more than fifteen years old. 
It had been founded in 1535. Curiously enough, 
just about the same interval had elapsed between 
the foundation of the JNIassachusetts colony by the 
Pilgrims and the legal establishment of the col- 
lege afterward known as Harvard by the General 
Court of the colony. It is evident that in both 
cases it was the needs of the rising generation who 
had come to be from twelve to sixteen years of 
age that led to the establishment of these institu- 
tions of higher education. The actual foundation 
of Harvard did not come for two years later, and 
the intention of the founders was not nearly so 
broad as that of the founders of the University of 
Lima. Already at Lima schools had been es- 



314 ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

tablished by the religious orders, and it was with 
the idea of organizing the education as it was 
being given that the charter from the Crown was 
obtained. With regard to both Lima and Mexico, 
within a few years a bull of approval and con- 
firmation was asked and obtained from the Pope. 
The University of Lima continued to develop with 
wonderful success. In the middle of the seven- 
teenth century it had more than a thousand stu- 
dents, at the beginning of the eighteenth it had 
two thousand students, and there is no doubt at 
all of its successful accomplishment of all that a 
university is supposed to do. 

Juan Antonio Ribeyro, who was the rector of 
the University of Lima forty years ago, said in 
the introduction to " The University Annals for 
1869 " that, " It cannot be denied that the Uni- 
versity of Peru during its early history filled a 
large role of direct intervention for the formation 
of laws, for the amelioration of customs and in 
directing all the principal acts of civil and private 
society, forming the religious beliefs, rendering 
them free from superstitions and errors and in- 
fluencing all the institutions of the countrj^ to the 
common good." Certainly this is all that would 
be demanded of a university as an influence for 
uplift, and the fact that such an ideal should have 
been cherished shows how well the purpose of an 
educational institution had been realized. 

The scholarly work done by some of these pro- 
fessors at Spanish-American universities still re- 



ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 315 

mains a model of true university work. It is the 
duty of the university to add to knowledge as 
well as to disseminate it. That ideal of univer- 
sity existence is supposed to be a creation of the 
nineteenth century, and indeed is often said to 
have been brought into the history of education 
by the example of the German universities. We 
find, however, that the professors of the Spanish- 
American universities accomplished much in this 
matter and that their works remain as precious 
storehouses of information for after generations. 
Professor Bourne has given but a short list of 
them in addition to those that have already been 
mentioned, but even this furnishes an excellent 
idea of how much the university professors of the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Spanish 
America were taking to heart the duty of gather- 
ing, arranging and classifying knowledge for 
after generations. They did more in the sciences 
than in anything else. It is often thought that 
our knowledge of the ethnology and anthropology 
of the Indians is entirely the creation of recent 
investigators, but that is true only if one leaves 
out of account the work of these old Spanish- 
American scholars. Professor Bourne says: 

" The most famous of the earlier Peruvian 
writers were Acosta, the historian, the author of 
the ' Natural and Civil History of the Indies ' ; 
the mestizo Garciasso de la Vega, who was edu- 
cated in Spain and wrote of the Inca Empire and 
De Soto's expedition; Sandoval, the author of the 



316 ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

first work on Africa and tlie negro written in 
America; Antonio Leon Pinelo, the first Amer- 
ican bibliographer, and one of the greatest as well 
of the indefatigable codifiers of the old legislation 
of the Indies. Pinelo was born in Peru and 
educated at the Jesuit College in Lima, but spent 
his literary life in Spain." 

Of the University of Mexico more details are 
available than of Peru, and the fact that it was 
situated here in North America and that the cul- 
ture which it influenced has had its effect on cer- 
tain portions of the United States, has made it 
seem worth while to devote considerable space 
to it. The University was called the Royal and 
Pontifical University of Mexico, because, while 
it was founded under the charter of the King 
of Spain, this had been confirmed by a bull from 
the Pope, who took the new university directly 
under the patronage of the Holy See. The rea- 
son for the foundation of the university, as the 
men at that time saw it, is contained in the open- 
ing chapter of St. John's Gospel, which is quoted 
as the preamble of the constitutions of the uni- 
versity: " In the beginning was the Word, and 
the Word was with God. The same was in the 
beginning with God. All things were made by 
Him and without Him was made nothing that 
was made. In Him was Life, and the Life was 
the light of men." This they considered ample 
reason for the erection of a university and the 
spread of knowledge with God's own sanctio^i. 



ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 317 

The patron saints of the university, as so de- 
clared by the first article of the constitutions, 
were St. Paul the Apostle, and St. Catherine the 
Martyr. Among the patrons, however, were also 
mentioned in special manner two other saints — 
St. John Nepomucen, who died rather than re- 
veal the secrets of the confessional, and St. Alo- 
ysius Gonzaga, the special patron of students. It 
is evident that these two j)atrons had been chosen 
with a particular idea that devotion to them would 
encourage the practice of such virtues and devo- 
tion to duty as would be especially useful to the 
students, clerical and secular, of the university. 
On all four of the feast days of these patrons the 
university had a holiday. This would seem to 
be adding notably to the number of free days in a 
modern university, but must have meant very little 
at the University of Mexico, they had so many 
other free days. The most striking difference 
between the calendar of the University of Mexico 
and that of a modern university would be the 
number of days in the year in which no lectures 
were given. There were some forty of these 
altogether. Besides the four patron saint days, 
the feast day of every Apostle was a holiday. 
Besides these, all the Fathers and Doctors of 
the Church gave reasons for holidays. Then 
there was St. Sebastian's Day, in order that 
young men might be brave, St. Joseph's Day, the 
Annunciation, the Expectation, the Assumption 
and the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, the In- 



318 ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

vention of the Holy Cross, the Three Rogation 
Days and the Feast of Our Lady of the Snows. 
Besides, there were St. Magdalen's, St. Ann's, 
St. Ignatius' and St. Lawrence's Day. These 
were not all, but this will give an idea how closely 
connected with the Church were the lectures at 
the university, or, rather, the intermission from 
the lectures. It might be said that this was a 
serious waste of precious time, and that our uni- 
versities in the modern time would not think of 
imitating them, but such a remark could come but 
from some one who did not realize the real con- 
dition that obtained in the old-time universities. 
At the present time our universities finish their 
scholastic year about the middle of May and do 
not begin again until October — nearly twenty 
weeks. At these old universities their annual 
intermission between scholastic years lasted only 
the six weeks from the Feast of the Nativity of 
the Blessed Virgin, September 8, to St. Luke's 
Day, October 18. They had five weeks at Easter 
time and two weeks at Christmas time. They 
spread their year out over a longer period and 
compensated for shorter vacations by granting 
holidays during the year. Their year's labor was 
less intense and spread out over more ground 
than ours. 

The development of the University of Mexico 
into a real university in the full sense of the old 
studium ge7ierale, in which all forms of human 
knowledge might be pursued, is very interesting 



ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 319 

and shows the thoroughgoing determination of 
the Spanish Americans to make for themselves 
and their children an institute of learning wor- 
thy of themselves and their magnificent new 
country. 

Chartered in 1551, it was not formally opened 
until 1553. Chairs were established in this year 
in theology, Sacred Scripture, canon law and 
decretals, laws, art, rhetoric and grammar. Both 
Spanish and Latin were taught in the classes of 
grammar and rhetoric. To these was added very 
shortly a chair in Mexican Indian languages, 
in accordance with the special provisions of the 
imperial charter. The university continued to 
develop and added further chairs and depart- 
ments as time went on. It had a chair of juris- 
prudence at the beginning, but its law depart- 
ment was completed in 1569 by the addition of 
two other chairs, one in the institutes of law, the 
other in codes of law. In the meantime the uni- 
versity had begun to make itself felt as a corpo- 
rate body for general uplift by publications of 
various kinds. Its professor of rhetoric. Dr. 
Cervantes Salazer, published in 1555 three in- 
teresting Latin dialogues in imitation of Erasmus' 
dialogues. At the moment Erasmus' " Col- 
loquia " was the most admired academic work in 
the university world of the time. The first of 
these dialogues described the University of 
Mexico, and the other two, taking up Mexico City 
and its environments, gave an excellent idea of 



320 ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

what the Spanish-American capital of Mexico 
was three centuries and a half ago. 

" The early promoters of education and mis- 
sions did not rely upon the distant European 
presses for the publication of their manuals. The 
printing press was introduced into the New 
World probably as early as 1536, and it seems 
likely that the first book, an elementary Christian 
doctrine called ' La Escala Espiritual ' (the 
ladder of the spirit), was issued in 1537. No 
copy of it, however, is known to exist. Seven 
different printers plied their craft in New Spain 
in the sixteenth century. Among the notable is- 
sues of these presses, besides the religious works 
and church service works, were dictionaries and 
grammars of the Mexican languages, Puga's 
' Cedulario ' in 1563, a compilation of royal ordi- 
nances, Farfan's ' Tractado de Medicina.' In 
1605 appeared the first text-book published in 
America for instruction in Latin, a manual of 
poetics with illustrative examples from heathen 
and Christian poets." (Bourne.) 

With the light thrown on the early history of 
printing on this continent by a paragraph like 
this, how amusing it is to be told that the tradi- 
tion among the printers and the publishers and 
even the bibliophiles of the United States is that 
the first book printed in America was the Massa- 
chusetts Bay Psalm Book printed, I believe, in 
1637. There were no less than seven printing 
presses at work in Mexico during the sixteenth 



ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 321 

century, fully fifty years before the Massachusetts 
Bay Psalm Book was issued. How interesting it 
is for those who still like to insist that the 
Catholic Church is opposed to the distribution 
of the Scriptures to the people or its printing 
in the vernacular, to find how many editions of 
it were printed in iNIexico and in South America 
during the sixteenth century. This story of the 
printing press in Spanish America in the early 
days would of itself make a most interesting 
chapter in a volume on American origins, which 
could probably be extended into a very valuable 
little manual of bibliography and bibliophilic in- 
formation that would arouse new interest in the 
accumulation of early American books. 

The university had been founded just twenty- 
five years when provision was made for the es- 
tabhshment of the medical department. Accord- 
ing to most of the chronicles the first chair in 
medicine was founded June 21, 1578, although 
there are some authorities who state that this 
establishment came only in 1580. I am a gradu- 
ate of the University of Pennsylvania Medical 
School myself, and I yield to none of her sons 
in veneration for my Alma Mater, but I cannot 
pass over this statement of the foundation of the 
medical school in Mexico without recalling that 
we have been rather proud at the University of 
Pennsylvania to be known as the First American 
Medical School. This is, of course, only due 
to our fond United States way of assuming 



322 ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

ourselves to be all America and utterly neglect- 
ing any knowledge of Spanish America. I be- 
lieve that there are tablets erected at the Univer- 
sity of Pennsylvania chronicling our priority. 
One of them is to the first graduating class, the 
other to the first faculty of the medical school. 
I believe that between the erection of the two 
tablets there had come to be some suspicion of the 
possibility that South America was ahead of us 
in this respect and so the second tablet specifically 
mentions North America. When I talked some 
time ago before the College of Physicians of 
Philadelphia on this subject one of my friends, 
who was a teacher at the university, asked me 
what they should do with their tablets. I sug- 
gested that, by all means, they should be allowed 
to remain, and that as soon as possible an op- 
portunity should be secured to erect the third 
tablet containing a statement of the real facts 
with regard to the place of the University of 
Pennsylvania as the protagonist in medicine in 
the United States. The tablets will then serve 
to show the gradual evolution of our knowledge 
of the true history of medical education in this 
country. It is all the more important that this 
should be the arrangement because the Univer- 
sity of Pennsylvania has been a leader in " the 
discovery " of South America that has been made 
by us in the last few years. 

Between the date of the foundation of the 
first chair in medicine at the beginning of the 



ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 323 

last quarter of the sixteenth century and the 
foundation of the city, Mexico had not been 
without provision of physicians. In the very 
first year of the existence of the University of 
Mexico, though there was no formal faculty of 
medicine, two doctors received their degrees in 
medicine from the university. They had been 
students in Spain and were able to satisfy the 
faculty of their ability. This shows that the in- 
stitution was considered to have the power to 
confer these degrees upon those who brought 
evidence of having completed the necessary stud- 
ies, though it was not in a position to provide 
facilities for these studies. It is evident that 
this custom continued in subsequent years until 
the necessity for medical studies at home became 
evident. The intimate connection between the 
universities of old Spain and of New Spain is 
a very interesting subject in the educational his- 
tory of the time. Even before the foundation 
of the university, however, definite efi^orts were 
made by the authorities to secure proper medi- 
cal service for the colonists and to prevent their 
exploitation by quacks and charlatans. 

Strict medical regulations were established by 
the JNIunicipal Council of the City of Mexico in 
1527 so as to prevent quacks from Europe, who 
might think to exploit the ills of the settlers in 
the new colony, from practising medicine. Li- 
censes to practise were issued only to those who 
showed the possession of a university degree. 



324 ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

This strict regulation of medical practice was 
extended also to the apothecaries in 1529. Even 
before this, arrangements had been made for the 
regular teaching of barber-surgeons, so that in- 
juries and wounds of various kinds might be 
treated properly, and so that emergencies might 
be promptly met, even in the absence of a physi- 
cian, by these barber-surgeons. Dr. Bandelier, in 
his article on Francisco Bravo in the second 
volume of the Catholic Encyclopedia, calls at- 
tention to some important details with regard to 
medicine in ^lexico in the early part of the six- 
teenth century, and especially to this distinguished 
physician who published the first book on medi- 
cine in that city in 1570. 

Three years before that time Dr. Pedrarius de 
Benavides had published his " Secretos de Chi- 
rurgia " at Valladolid, in Spain, a work which 
had been written in America and contained an 
immense amount of knowledge that is invaluable 
with regard to Indian medicinal practice. Dr. 
Bravo's work, however, has the distinction of being 
the first medical treatise printed in America. 

The issuance of these books shows the intense 
interest in medicine in the sixteenth century, but 
there are other details which serve to show how 
thorough and practical were the efforts of the 
authorities in securing the best possible medi- 
cal practice. In 1524 there was founded in the 
City of Mexico a hospital, which still stands and 
which was a model in its way. That way was 



ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 325 

much better than the mode of the construction 
of hospitals in the eighteenth century, for in- 
stance, when hospitals and care for the ailing 
reached the lowest ebb in modern times. Other 
hospitals besides this foundation by Cortez soon 
arose, and the wards of these hospitals were 
used for purposes of clinical teaching. Clinical 
or bedside teaching in medicine is supposed to be 
a comparatively recent feature of medical educa- 
tion. There are traces of it, however, at all times 
in history and while at times when theory ruled 
the practical application of observation waned, it 
was constantly coming back whenever men took 
medical education seriously. Its employment in 
Mexico seems to have been an obvious develop- 
ment of their very practical methods, which began 
with the teaching of first aid to the injured and 
developed through special studies of the particu- 
lar diseases of the country and of the methods 
of curing them by native drugs. 

A chair of botany existed already in connec- 
tion with the university, and this, with the lectures 
on medicine, constituted the medical training until 
1599, when a second medical lectureship was 
added. During the course of the next twenty 
years altogether seven chairs in medicine were 
founded, so that besides the two lectureships in 
medicine there was a chair of anatomy and sur- 
gery, a special chair of dissection, a chair of 
therapeutics, the special duty of which was to 
lecture on Galen '' De Methodo Medendi," a 



326 ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

chair of mathematics and astrology, for the 
stars were supposed to influence human constitu- 
tions by all the learned men of this time and 
even Kepler and Galileo and Tycho-Brahe were 
within this decade making horoscopes for impor- 
tant people in Europe, and, finally, a chair of 
prognostics. Most of the teaching was founded 
on Hippocrates and Galen, and lest this should 
seem sufficient to condemn it as hopelessly back- 
ward in the minds of many, it may be recalled 
that during the century following this time Syden- 
ham, in England, and Boerhaave, in Holland, the 
most distinguished medical men of their time and 
looked on with great reverence by the teachers of 
ours, were both of them pleading for a return to 
Hippocrates and Galen. As a matter of fact, the 
medical school of the University of Mexico was 
furnishing quite as good a medical training as the 
average medical school in Europe at that time, at 
least so far as the subjects lectured on are con- 
cerned. Indeed, it was modelled closely after the 
Spanish universities, which were considered well 
up to the standard of the time. 

In the meantime additional chairs in university 
subjects continued to be founded. Another chair 
in arts was established in 1586, and further chairs 
in law and grammar were added at the begin- 
ning of the sixteenth century. The Spanish 
Crown was very much interested in Mexican 
education, and King Philip II of Spain, who is 
usually mentioned in English history for quite 



^ ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 327 

other qualities than his interest in culture and 
education, was esi^ecially Hberal in his provision 
from the Crown revenues of funds for the univer- 
sity. At the beginning of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, according to Flores in his " History of 
Medicine in Mexico from the Indian Times Down 
to the Present," the total amount of income from 
the Crown allowed the University of Mexico was 
nearly $10,000. This was about Shakespeare's 
time, and so we have readily available calcula- 
tions as to the buying power of money at that 
time compared to our own. It is usually said 
that the money of Elizabeth's time had eight to 
ten times the trading value of ours. This would 
mean that the University of Mexico had nearly 
an income of $100,000 apart from fees and other 
sources of revenue. This would not be considered 
contemptible even in our own day for a university 
having less than twenty professorships. 

The number of students at the University of 
Mexico is not absolutely known, but, as we have 
seen. Professor Bourne calculates that the Uni- 
versity of Lima had at the beginning of the 
eighteenth century more than 2,000 students. 
The University of Mexico at the same time prob- 
ably had more than 1,000 students, and both 
of these universities were larger in number than 
any institution of learning within the boundaries 
of the present United States until after the 
middle of the nineteenth century. After all, we 
began to have universities in the real sense of 



328 ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

that word — that is, educational institutions giving 
opportunities in undergraduate work and the 
graduate departments of law, medicine and theol- 
ogy — not until nearly the end of the first quarter 
of the nineteenth century. Our medical and law 
schools did not, as a rule, become attached to our 
universities until the second half of the nine- 
teenth century, and even late in that. This was 
to the serious detriment of post-graduate work, 
and especially detrimental to the preliminary 
training required for it, and consequently to the 
products of these schools. 

Before a student could enter one of the post- 
graduate departments at the University of Mexico 
in law or medicine, he was required to have made 
at least three years of studies in the undergradu- 
ate departments. When we contrast this regula- 
tion with the custom in the United States, the re- 
sult is a little startling. Until the last quarter 
of the nineteenth century students might enter 
our medical schools straight from the 2:)low or the 
smithy or the mechanic's bench, and without any 
preliminary education, after two terms of medical 
lectures consisting of four months each, be given 
a degree which was a license to practise medicine. 
The abuses of such a system are manifest, and 
actually came into existence. They were not 
permitted in Mexico even in the seventeenth 
century. 

It might perhaps be thought that these mag- 
nificent opportunities in education were provided 



ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 329 

only for the higher classes, or concerned only 
book learning and the liberal and professional 
studies. Far from any such exclusiveness as this, 
their schools were thoroughly rounded and gave 
instruction in the arts and crafts and recognized 
the value of manual training. We have only come 
to appreciate in the last few decades how much 
we ha^ e lost in education in America by neglect- 
ing these features of education for the masses. 
While Germany has manual training for over fifty 
per cent, of the children who go to her schools, 
here in the United States we provide it for 
something less than one per cent, of our children. 
They made no such mistake as this in the Spanish- 
American countries. Indeed, Professor Bourne's 
paragraph on this subject is perhaps the most 
interesting feature of what he has to say with 
regard to education in Spanish America. The 
objective methods of education, as he depicts 
them, the thoroughly practical content of educa- 
tion, and the fact that the Church was one of the 
main factors in bringing about this well-rounded 
education, is of itself a startling commentary on 
the curiously perverted notions that have been 
held in the past with regard to the comparative 
value of education in Spanish and in English 
America and the attitude of the Church toward 
these educational questions: 

" Both the Crown and the Church were solici- 
tous for education in the colonies, and provisions 
were made for its promotion on a far greater 



330 ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

scale than was possible or even attempted in 
the English colonies. The early Franciscan mis- 
sionaries built a school beside each church, and 
in their teaching abundant use was made of signs, 
drawings and paintings. The native languages 
were reduced to writing, and in a few years In- 
dians were learning to read and write. Pedro 
de Gante, a Flemish lay brother and a relative 
of Charles V, founded and conducted in the In- 
dian quarter in Mexico a great school, attended 
by over a thousand Indian boys, which combined 
instruction in elementary and higher branches, 
the mechanical and fine arts. In its workshops 
the boys were taught to be tailors, carpenters, 
blacksmiths, shoemakers and painters." 

If there was all this of progress in education 
in Spanish- American countries in advance of 
what we had in the United States, people will 
be prone to ask where, then, are the products 
of the Spanish- American education? This is only 
a fair question, and if the products cannot be 
shown, their education, however pretentious, must 
have been merely superficial or hollow, and must 
have meant nothing for the culture of their 
people. We are sure that most people would 
consider the question itself quite sufficient for 
argument, for it would be supposed to be un- 
answerable. 

Such has been the state of mind created by his- 
tory as it is written for English-speaking people, 
that we are not at all prepared to think that there 



ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 331 

can possibly be in existence certain great products 
of Spanish- American education that show very 
clearly how much better educational systems were 
developed in Spanish than in English America. 
The fact that we do not know them, however, 
is only another evidence of the one-sidedness of 
American education in the North, even at the 
present time. Our whole attitude toward the 
South American people,, our complacent self- 
sufficiency from which we look down on them, our 
thoroughgoing condescension for their ignorance 
and backwardness, is all founded on our lack of 
real knowledge with regard to them. 

The most striking product of South American 
education was the architectural structures which 
the Spanish-American people erected as orna- 
ments of their towns, memorials of their culture 
and evidences of their education. The cathedrals 
in the Spanish towns of South America and 
Mexico are structures, as a rule, fairly comparable 
with the ecclesiastical buildings erected by towns 
of the same size in Europe. As a rule, they were 
planned at least in the sixteenth century, and most 
of them were finished in the seventeenth century. 
Their cathedrals are handsome architectural struc- 
tures worthy of their faith and enduring evidence 
of their taste and love of beauty. The ecclesiastical 
buildings, the houses of their bishops and arch- 
bishops and their monasteries were worthy of their 
cathedrals and churches. Most of them are beau- 
tiful, all of them are dignified, all of them had 



332 ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

a permanent character that has made them endure 
down to our day and has made them an unfaiHng 
ornament of the towns in which they are. Their 
municipal buildings partook of this same type. 
Some of them are very handsome structures. Of 
their universities we have already heard that they 
were imposing buildings from without, hand- 
somely decorated within. 

It must not be forgotten that the Spanish 
Americans practically invented the new style of 
architecture. How effective that style is, we had 
abundant opportunity to see when it was em- 
ployed for the building of the Pan-American Ex- 
position at Buffalo. That style is essentially 
American. It is the only new thing that America 
has contributed to construction since its settle- 
ment. How thoroughly suitable it was for the 
climate for which it was invented, those who 
have had experience of it in the new hotels erected 
in Florida, in the last decade or so, can judge 
very well. JNIany of its effects are an adaptation 
of classical formulse to buildings for the warm, 
yet uncertain climate of many parts of South 
America. Some of the old monasteries con- 
structed after this style are beautiful examples 
of architecture in every sense of the word. If 
the Spanish-American monks had done nothing 
else but leave us this handsome new model in 
architecture they would not have lived in vain, nor 
would their influence in American life have been 
without its enduring effects. This is a typical 



ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 333 

product of the higher culture of the South Span- 
ish-American people. 

With regard to the churches, it may be said 
that the spirit of the Puritans was entirely op- 
posed to anything like the ornamentation of their 
churches, and that, indeed, these were not churches 
in the usual sense of the word, but were merely 
meeting houses. Hence there was not the same 
impulse to make them beautiful as lifted the Span- 
ish Americans into their magnificent expressions 
of architectural beauty. On the other hand, there 
are other buildings in regard to which, if there 
had been any real culture in the minds of the 
English Americans, we have a right to expect 
some beauty as well as usefulness. If we con- 
trast for a moment the hospitals of English and 
Spanish America the difference is so striking as to 
show the lack of some important quality in the 
minds of the builders at the north. Spanish- 
American hospitals are among the beautiful struc- 
tures with which they began to adorn their towns 
early, and some of them remain at the present 
day as examples of the architectural taste of their 
builders. They were usually low, often of but 
one story in height, with a courtyard and with 
ample porticos for convalescents, and thick walls 
to defend them from the heat of the climate. In 
many features they surpass many hospitals that 
have been built in America until very recent 
years. They were modelled on the old mediseval 
hospitals, some of which are very beautiful ex- 



S34> ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

amjiles of how to build places for the care of the 
ailing. 

Contrast for a moment with this the state of 
affairs that has existed with regard to our church 
buildings and our public structures of all kinds 
in North America, down to the latter half of 
the nineteenth century. We have no buildings 
dating from before the nineteenth century that 
have any pretension to architectural beauty. 
They were built merely for utility. Some of them 
still have an interest for us because of historical 
associations, but they are a standing evidence of 
the lack of taste of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors. 
The English poet, Yeats, said at a little dinner 
given to him just before he left this country ten 
years ago, that no nation can pretend to being 
cultured until the very utensils in the kitchen are 
beautiful as well as useful. What is to be said, 
then, of a nation that erects public buildings that 
are to be merely useful? As a matter of fact, 
most of them were barracks. The American peo- 
ple woke up somewhat in the nineteenth century, 
but the awakening was very slow. A few hand- 
some structures were erected, but it is not until 
the last decade or two that we have been able to 
awaken public taste to the necessity for having 
all our public buildings beautiful as well as useful. 

The effect of this taste for structural beauty on 
the appearance of the streets of their towns was 
an important element in making them very dif- 
ferent from our cramped and narrow pathways. 



ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 335 

The late Mr. Ernest Crosby once expressed this 
very emphatically in an after-dinner speech, by 
detailing his experience with regard to Havana. 
He had visited the Cuban capital some twenty 
years ago, and found it very picturesque in its 
old Spanish ways. It is true the streets were dirty 
and the death-rate was somewhat high, but the 
vista that you saw when you came around the 
corner of a street, was not the same that you had 
seen around every other corner for twenty miles; 
it was different. It was largely a city of homes, 
with some thought of life being made happy, 
rather than merely being laborious. It was a 
place to live in and enjoy life while it lasted, and 
not merely a place to exist in and make money. 
He came north by land. The first town that he 
struck on the mainland, he said, reminded him of 
Hoboken. Every other town that he struck in the 
North reminded him more and more of Hoboken, 
until he came to the immortal Hoboken itself. 
The American end of the Anglo-Saxon idea 
seemed to him to make all the towns like Ho- 
boken as far as possible. There is only one town 
in this country that is not like Hoboken, and 
that is Washington; and whenever we let the 
politicians work their wills on that — witness the 
Pension Building — it has a tendency to grow 
more and more like Hoboken. Perhaps we shall 
be able to save it. As for Havana, he said he 
understood that the death-rate had been cut in 
two, and that yellow fever was no longer epi- 



336 ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

demic there, but he understood also that the town 
was growing more and more hke Hoboken, so 
that he scarcely dared go back to see it. 

The parable has a lesson that is well worth 
driving home for our people, for it emphasizes 
a notable lack of culture among the American 
people, which did not exist among the Spanish 
Americans, a lack which we did not realize until 
the last decade or two, though it is an important 
index of true culture. The hideous buildings that 
we have allowed ourselves to live in in America, 
and, above all, that we have erected as represent- 
ing the dignity of city, and only too often even 
of state, together with the awful evidence of graft, 
whenever an attempt has been made to correct 
this false taste and erect something worthy of us, 
the graft usually spoiling to a very great extent 
our best purposes, proclaim an absence of culture 
in American life that amounts to a conviction of 
failure of our education to be liberal in the true 
sense of the word. 

There were other products of Spanish- American 
education quite as striking as the architectural 
beauties with which Mexicans and South Ameri- 
cans adorned their towns. Quite as interesting, 
indeed, as their architecture is their literature. 
Ordinarily we are apt to assume that because we 
have heard almost nothing of Spanish- American 
literature, there must be very little of it, and 
what little there is must have very little signifi- 
cance. This is only another one of these examples 



ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 337 

of how ridiculous it is to know something " that 
ain't so." Spanish-American hterature is very rich. 
It begins very early in the history of the Spanish 
settlement. It is especially noteworthy for its 
serious products, and when the world's account 
of the enduring literature of the past four cen- 
turies will be made up much more of what was 
written in South America will live than what has 
been produced in North America. This seems 
quite unpatriotic, but it is only an expression of 
proper estimation of values, without any of that 
amusing self-complacencj^ which so commonly 
characterizes North American estimation of any- 
thing that is done by our j^eople. 

South American literature, in the best sense of 
that much abused term, begins shortly after the 
middle of the sixteenth century, with the writing 
of the Spanish poet, Ercilla's, epic, " Araucana," 
which was composed in South America during the 
decade from 1550 to 1560. This is a literary 
work of genuine merit, that has attracted the at- 
tention of critics and scholars of all kinds and 
has given its author a significant place even in 
the limited field of epic poetry among the few 
great names that the world cares to recall in this 
literary mode. Voltaire considered this epic poem 
a great contribution to literature, and in the 
prefatorial essay to his own epic, the " Henriade," 
he praises it very highly. The poem takes its 
name from the Araucanos Indians, who had risen 
in revolt against the Spaniards in Chile, and 



338 ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

against whom the poet served for nearly ten years. 
He did not learn to despise them, and while the 
literature which does justice to the lofty senti- 
ments which sometimes flowed from mouths of 
great Indian chiefs, is supposed to be much more 
recent, Ercilla's most enthusiastically extolled pas- 
sage is the noble speech which he has given to 
the aged chief, Colocolo, in the " Araucana." 

The expedition against the Araucanos inspired 
two other fine poems — that of Pedro de Ona, 
" Arauco Domado," written near the end of the 
century, and " Araucana," written by Diego de 
Santisteban, whose poem also saw the light before 
the seventeenth century opened. A fourth poet, 
Juan de Castellanos, better than either of these, 
wrote " Elegias de Varones Ilustres de Indias." 
He was a priest who had served in America, and 
who remembered some of the magnificent traits of 
the Indians that he had observed during his life 
among them, and made them the subject of his 
poetry. This was only the beginning of a serious 
Spanish- American literature, that has continued 
ever since. Father Charles Warren Currier, in 
a series of lectures at the Catholic Summer 
School three years ago, did not hesitate to say 
that the body of Spanish- American literature was 
much larger and much more important, and much 
more of it was destined to endure than of our 
English-American literature. In the light of 
what these Spaniards had done for education in 
their universities, and for the beauty of life in 



ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 339 

their cities by their architecture, this is not so sur- 
prising a saying as it might otherwise be. All 
of these things stand together and are confirma- 
tions one of the other. 

The most interesting product of Spanish- 
American education, however, — the one which 
shows that it really stood for a higher civilization 
than ours, — remains to be spoken of. It consists 
of their treatment of the Indians. From the very 
beginning, as we have just shown, their literature 
in Spanish America did justice to the Indians. 
They saw his better traits. It is true they had a 
better class of Indians, as a rule, to deal with, 
but there is no doubt also that they did much to 
keep him on a higher level, while everything in 
North America that was done by the settlers was 
prone to reduce the native in the scale of civiliza- 
tion. He was taught the vices and not the virtues 
of civilization, and little was attempted to uplift 
him. Just as tlie literary men were interested in 
the better side of his character, so the Spanish- 
American scientists were interested in his folk- 
lore, in his medicine, in his arts and crafts, in his 
ethnology and anthropology — in a word, in all 
that North Americans have only come to be inter- 
ested in during the nineteenth century. Books on 
all these subjects were published, and now consti- 
tute a precious fund of knowledge with regard to 
the aborigines that would have been lost only for 
the devotion of Spanish- American scholars. 

It is not surprising, then, that the Indian him- 



340 ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

self, with all this interest in him, did not dis- 
appear, as in North America, but has remained 
to constitute the basis of South American peo- 
ples. If the South American peoples are behind 
our own in anything, it is because large elements 
in them have been raised from a state of semi- 
barbarism into civilization, while our people have 
all come from nations that were long civilized and 
we have none at all of the natives left. Wherever 
the English went always the aborigines disap- 
peared before them. The story is the same in New 
Zealand and Australia as it is in North America, 
and it would be the same in India, only for the 
teeming millions that live in that peninsula, for 
whom Anglo-Saxon civilization has never meant 
an uplift in any sense of the word, but rather 
the contrary. The white man's burden has been 
to carry the Indian, instilling into him all the 
vices, until no longer he could cling to his shifty 
master and was shaken off to destruction. 

This story of the contrast of the treatment of 
the Indian at the North and the South is prob- 
ably the best evidence for the real depth of cul- 
ture that the magnificent education of the Span- 
iards, so early and so thoroughly organized in 
their colonies, accomplished for this continent. 
Alone it would stand as the highest possible 
evidence of the interest of the Spanish Govern- 
ment and the Spanish Church in the organiza- 
tion not only of education, but of government in 
such a way as to bring happiness and uplift for 



ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 341 

both natives and colonists in the Spanish-Amer- 
ican countries. Abuses there were, as there al- 
ways will be where men are concerned and where 
a superior race comes in contact with an in- 
ferior. These abuses, however, were exceptions 
and not the rule. The policy instituted by the 
Spaniards and maintained in spite of the tenden- 
cies of men to degenerate into tyranny and mis- 
use of the natives is well worthy of admiration. 
English-speaking history has known very little of 
it until comparatively recent years. Mr. Sidney 
Lee, the editor of the English Biographical Dic- 
tionary and the author of a series of works on 
Shakespeare which has gained for him recogni- 
tion as probably the best living authority on the 
history of the Elizabethan times, wrote a series 
of articles which appeared in Scribners last year 
on " The Call of the West." This was meant to 
undo much of the prejudice which exists in regard 
to Spanish colonization in this country and to 
mitigate the undue reverence in which the Eng- 
lish explorers and colonists have been held by 
comparison. There seems every reason to think, 
then, that this newer, truer view of history is 
gradually going to find its way into circulation. 
In the meantime it is amusing to look back and 
realize how much prejudice has been allowed to 
warp English history in this matter, and how, as 
a consequence of the determined, deliberate efforts 
to blacken the Spanish name, we have had to 
accept as history exactly the opposite view to the 



342 ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

reality in this matter. Lest we should be thought 
to be exaggerating, we venture to quote one of 
the opening paragraphs of Mr. Sidney Lee's 
article as it appeared in Scribner's for May, 
1907: "Especially has theological bias justified 
neglect or facilitated misconception of Spain's 
role in the sixteenth century drama of American 
history. Spain's initial adventures in the New 
World are often consciously or unconsciously 
overlooked or underrated in order that she may 
figure on the stage of history as the benighted 
champion of a false and obsolete faith, which was 
vanquished under divine protecting Providence 
by English defenders of the true religion. Many 
are the hostile critics who have painted sixteenth 
century Spain as the avaricious accumulator of 
American gold and silver, to which she had no 
right, as the monopolist of American trade, of 
which she robbed others, and as the oppressor and 
exterminator of the weak and innocent aborigines 
of the new continent who deplored her presence 
among them. Cruelty in all its hideous forms is, 
indeed, commonly set forth as Spain's only in- 
strument of rule in her sixteenth century empire. 
On the other hand, the English adventurer has 
been credited by the same pens with a touching 
humanity, with the purest religious aspirations, 
with a romantic courage which was always at the 
disposal of the oppressed native. 

" No such picture is recognized when we apply 
the touchstone of the oral traditions, printed 



ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 343 

books, maps and manuscripts concerning America 
which circulated in Shakespeare's England. 
There a predilection for romantic adventure is 
found to sway the Spaniards in even greater 
degree than it swayed the Elizabethan. Re- 
ligious zeal is seen to inspirit the Spaniards more 
constantly and conspicuously than it stimulated 
his English contemporary. The motives of each 
nation are barely distinguishable one from an- 
other. Neither deserves to be credited with any 
monopoly of virtue or vice. Above all, the study 
of contemporary authorities brings into a dazzling 
light which illumes every corner of the picture the 
commanding facts of the Spaniard's priority as 
explorer, as scientific navigator, as conqueror, as 
settler." 

Here is magnificent praise from one who can- 
not be suspected of national or creed affinities to 
bias his judgment. He has studied the facts and 
not the prejudiced statements of his countrymen. 
The more carefully the work of the Spaniards in 
America during the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries is studied, the more praise is bestowed 
upon them. The more a writer knows of actual 
conditions the more does he feel poignantly the 
injustice that has been done by the Protestant 
tradition which abused the good that was accom- 
phshed by the Catholic Spanish and which neg- 
lected, distorted and calumniated his deeds and 
motives. This bit of Protestant tradition is, after 
all, only suffering the fate that every other Prot- 



344 ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

estant position has undergone during the course of 
the development of scientific historical criticism. 
Every step toward the newer, truer history has 
added striking details to the picture of the benefi- 
cent influences of the Church upon her people 
in every way. It has shown up pitilessly the 
subterfuges, the misstatements and the positive 
ignorance which have enabled Protestantism to 
maintain the opposite impression in people's 
minds in order to show how impossible was 
agreement with the Catholic Church, since it 
stood for backwardness and ignorance and utter 
lack of sympathy with intellectual development. 
Now we find everywhere that just the opposite 
was true. Whenever the Reformation had the 
opportunity to exert itself to the full, education 
and culture suffered. Erasmus said in his time, 
" Wherever Lutheranism reigns there is an end 
of literature." Churches and cathedrals that used 
to be marvellous expressions of the artistic and 
poetic feeling of the people became the ugliest 
kind of mere meeting houses. Rev. Augustus 
Jessop, himself an Anglican clergyman, tells how 
" art died out in rural England " after the Refor- 
mation, which he calls The Great Pillage, and 
" King Whitewash and Queen Ugliness ruled 
supreme for centuries." The same thing hap- 
pened in Germany, and education was affected 
quite as much as art. German national develop- 
ment was delayed, and she has come to take her 
place in world influence only in the nineteenth 



ORIGINS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 345 

century, after most of the influence of the rehgious 
revolt led by Luther in the sixteenth century has 
passed away. These are but a few of the striking 
differences in recent history that are so well 
typified by the contrast between what was ac- 
complished for art and culture and architecture 
and education by the Catholic Spaniard and the 
English Protestant here in America during the 
sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 
Truth is coming to her own at last, and it is in the 
history of education particularly that advances 
are being made which change the whole aspect of 
the significance of history during the past 350 
years. 



THE MEDICAL PROFESSION FOR SIX 
THOUSAND YEARS 



" Tu rccte vivis si curas esse quod audis ; 
Neve putes alium sapiente bonoque beatum." 
— Horace, Ep., 1, 16. 

[You are living right if you take care to be what peo- 
ple say you are. Do not imagine that any one who is 
really happy is other than wise and good.] 

" Quod ipse sis, non quod habearis, interest." — Publius 

Syrus. 
[The question is what you are, not what you are thought 

to be.] 

" May you so raise your character, that you may help 
to make the next age a better thing, and leave posterity 
in your debt for the advantage it shall receive by your 
example." — Lord Halifax. 



THE MEDICAL PROFESSION FOR SIX 
THOUSAND YEARS* 

I HAVE felt that the first graduation of the 
youngest of the medical schools might very well 
be occupied with the consideration of the place 
of the medical profession in history. We are 
rather apt in the modern time to neglect the 
lessons of history and, above all, of the history 
of science, first because it is not always easy to 
get definite information with regard to it, and 
secondly and mainly because we are likely to 
imagine that scientific and medical history can 
mean very little for us. In America particularly 
we have neglected the history of medicine and it 
has been one of the definite efforts at Fordham 
University School of Medicine to renew interest in 
this subject. It is entirely too important to be 
neglected and it has valuable lessons for all gen- 
erations, but especially for a generation so occu- 
pied with itself, that it does not properly, consider 
the claims of the past to recognition for fine work 
accomplished, and for the exhibition of some of 
the best qualities of the human intellect in the 
pursuit of scientific and practical medical knowl- 
edge in previous generations. 

* This was the address to the graduates at the First Commencement 
of the Fordham University School of Medicine, June 9, 1909. 

349 



350 MEDICINE FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS 

At the earliest dawn of history we find institu- 
tions called temples in which men were being 
treated for their ailments. Those who treated 
them we have been accustomed to speak of as 
priests. And such they were, since their func- 
tions included the direction of religious services. 
These religious services, however, were not the 
exercises of religion as we know them now, but 
were special services meant to propitiate certain 
gods who were supposed to rule over health and 
disease. There were other kinds of temples be- 
sides these. We still talk of temples of justice 
meaning our law courts, and our phrase comes 
from an older time when people went to have 
their differences of opinion adjudicated by men 
who conducted the services of praise and prayer 
for particular deities who were supposed to mete 
out justice to men, but the temple attendants 
were at the same time expert in deciding causes, 
knowing right and wrong, wise in declaring how 
justice should be done. These early temples, then, 
in which the ailing were treated and over which 
experts in disease and its treatment presided, 
were not temples in our modern sense, but were 
much like hospitals as we know them now. They 
would remind us of the hospitals conducted by 
religious orders, trained to care for the illnesses 
of mankind and yet deeply interested in the wor- 
ship of God. 

Human institutions are never so different from 
one another, even in spite of long distance of time 



MEDICINE FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS 351 

or place, as they are usually presumed to be. 
Men and women have not changed in all the 
period of human history that we know, and their 
modes and ways of life often have a startling 
similarity if we but find the key for the signifi- 
cance of customs that seem to be very different. 
These temples of the gods of health and of dis- 
ease, then, were places where patients congre- 
gated and men studied diseases for generations, 
and passed on their knowledge from one to an- 
other, and accumulated information, and elabo- 
rated theories, and came to conclusions, often 
on insufficient premises, and did many other 
things that we are doing at the present time. 
The medical profession is directly descended from 
these institutions. They are among the oldest 
that we know of in human history. These special 
temples are q^ly a little less ancient than other 
forms of temples if, indeed, they were not the 
first to be founded, for man's first most clamorous 
reason for appeal to the gods has ever been him- 
self and his own health. 

With the reception of your diplomas this even- 
ing you now belong to what is therefore prob- 
ably the oldest profession in the world. In wel- 
coming you into it let me call your attention par- 
ticularly to the fact that the history of our pro- 
fession can be traced back to the very beginning 
of the course of time, for as long as we have any 
account of men's actions in an organized social 
order. 



352 MEDICINE FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS 

We are very prone in the modern time to think 
that what we are doing in each successive genera- 
tion is of so much greater significance than what 
was accomplished before our time that it is really 
scarcely worth while to give much attention to 
the past. This self-sufficient complacency with 
regard to the present would be quite unbearable 
only that each successive generation in its turn 
has had the same tendency and has expiated its 
fault by being thought little of by subsequent 
generations. We shall have our turn with those 
we affect to despise. 

It is supposed to be particularly true in every 
department of science and, above all, in medicine 
that there is such a wide chasm between what we 
are doing now and what was accomplished by om* 
forebears, no matter how intelligent they were in 
the long ago, that to occupy ourselves seriously 
with the history of medicine may be a pleasant 
occupation for an elderly physician who has noth- 
ing better to do, but can mean very little for the 
young man entering upon practice or for the 
physician busy with his patients. Medical his- 
tory may be good enough for some book-worm 
interested in dry-as-dust details for their own 
sake and perhaps because he rejoices in the fact 
that other people do not know them, but can 
have very little significance for the up-to-date 
physician. This is an impression that is dying 
hard just now, but it is dying. We are learn- 
ing that there is very little that we are do- 



MEDICINE FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS 353 

ing even now that has not been done before us 
and that, above all, the great physicians, no 
matter how long ago they wrote, always have 
precious lessons for us that we cannot afford to 
neglect, even though they be 300 or 600 or 1,800 
or even 2,500 years ago. At all of these dates 
in the past there were physicians whose works 
will never die. 

In every department of human history the im- 
pression that we are the only ones whose work is 
significant has been receiving a sad jolt in recent 
years, and perhaps in no branch of science is 
this so true as in medicine. We are coming to 
realize how much the physicians and surgeons of 
long distant times accomplished, and, above all, 
we are learning to appreciate that they ap- 
proached problems in medicine at many periods 
of medical history in the best scientific temper of 
the modern time. Of course there were abuses, 
but, then, the Lord knows, there are abuses now. 
Of course their therapeutics had many absurdities 
in it, but, then, let us not forget that Professor 
Charles Richet, the director of the department 
of physiology at the University of Paris, de- 
clared not long ago in an article in the best 
known of French magazines, the Revue des Deux 
Mondes, that the therapeutics of any generation 
of the world's history always contained many 
absurdities — for the second succeeding genera- 
tion. The curious thing about it is that some 
of these supposed absurdities afterward come 



354 MEDICINE FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS 

back into vogue and prove to be precious germs 
of discovery, or remedies of value that occasion- 
ally even develop into excellent systems of treat- 
ment. 

Of course there were superstitions in the old 
days, but, then, there have been superstitions in 
medicme at all times. Any one who thinks that 
we are without superstitions in medicine at the 
present time, superstitions that are confidently 
accepted by many regular practising physicians, 
must, indeed, be innocent. A superstition is in its 
etymology a survival. It comes from the Latin 
superstes, a survivor. It is the acceptance of 
some doctrine the reasons for which have dis- 
appeared in the progress of knowledge or the de- 
velopment of science, though the doctrine itself 
still maintains a hold on the minds of man. 
Superstition has nothing necessarily to do with 
religion, though it is with regard to religion that 
doctrines are particularly apt to be accepted 
after the reasons for them have disappeared. In 
medicine, however, superstitions are almost as 
common as in religion. I shall never forget a dis- 
cussion with two of the most prominent physicians 
of this country on this subject. 

One of them was our greatest pathologist, the 
other a great teacher of clinical medicine, who 
came into medicine through chemistry and there- 
fore had a right to opinions with regard to the 
chemical side of medicine. We had been discuss- 
ing the question of how much serious medical 



MEDICINE FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS 355 

education there was in the Middle Ages and how, 
in spite of the magnificent work done, so many 
superstitions in medicine continued to maintain 
themselves. I remarked that it seemed impossible 
to teach truths to large bodies of men without 
having them accept certain doctrines which they 
thought truths but which were only theories and 
which they insisted on holding after the reasons 
for them had passed away. I even ventured to 
say that I thought that there were as many super- 
stitions now, and such as there were, were of as 
great significance as those that maintained them- 
selves in the Middle Ages. My chemical clinician 
brother on the right side said, " Let us not forget 
in this regard the hold the uric acid diathesis has 
on the English-speaking medical profession." And 
the brother pathologist on the left side: "Well, 
and what shall we say of intestinal auto-intoxica- 
tion?" 

Perhaps j^ou will not realize all the force of 
these expressions at the present time, but after 
you have been five years in the practice of medi- 
cine and have been flooded by the literature of 
the advertising manufacturing pharmacist and 
by the samples of the detail man and his advice 
and suggestion of principles of practice, if you 
will listen to thenj, perhaps you will appreciate 
how much such frank expressions mean as por- 
traying the medical superstitions of our time. 

Surely we who have for years been much 
occupied with the superstition, for such it now 



356 MEDICINE FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS 

turns out to be, of heredity in medicine, will not 
be supercilious toward older generations and their 
superstitions. Until a few years ago we were 
perfectly sure that a number of diseases were 
inherited directly. Tuberculosis, rheumatism, 
gout, various nutritional disturbances all were 
supposed to pass from father to son and from 
mother to daughter, or sometimes to cross the 
sex line. For a time cancer was deemed to be 
surely hereditary to some degree at least. Now 
most of us know that probably no disease is 
directly inherited, that acquired characters are 
almost surely not transmitted, and that while 
defects may be the subject of heredity, disease 
never is. Not only this, biological investigations 
have served to show that what is the subject of 
inheritance is just the opposite, — resistance to 
disease. A person whose father and mother had 
suffered from tuberculosis used to think it almost 
inevitable that he too should suffer from it. If 
they had died that he too would die. Our experts 
in tuberculosis declare now, that if tuberculosis 
has existed in the preceding generation there is 
a much better chance of the patient recovering 
from it, or at least resisting it for a long time, 
than if there had been no tuberculosis in the 
family. We had been harborijig the superstition 
of heredity, the surviver opinion from a preceding 
generation, until we learned better by observa- 
tion. 

Let us turn from such discussion to the be- 



MEDICINE FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS 357 

ginnings of the story of our medical profession 
as it has been revealed to us in recent years. 

The first picture that we have of a physician 
in history is, indeed, one to make us proud of 
our profession. The first physician was I-em- 
Hetep, whose name means " the bringer of 
peace." He had two other titles according to 
tradition, one of which was " the master of 
secrets," evidently in reference to the fact that 
more or less necessarily many secrets must be 
entrusted to the physician, but also, doubtless, in 
connection with the knowledge of the secrets of 
therapeutics which he was supposed to possess. 
Another of his titles was that of " the scribe of 
numbers," by which, perhaps, reference is made to 
his j)rescriptions, which may have been lengthy, 
for there are many " calendar " prescriptions in 
the early days, but may only refer to the neces- 
sity of his knowing weights and measures and 
numbers very exactly for professional purposes. 
I-em-Hetep lived in the reign of King Tchser, 
a monarch of the third dynasty in Egypt, the 
date of which is somewhat uncertain, but is about 
4500 B.C. How distinguished this first physician 
was in his time may be gathered from the fact 
that the well-known step pyramid at Sakkara, the 
old cemetery near .Memphis, is attributed to him. 
So great was the honor paid to him that, after 
his death he was worshipped as a god, and so 
we have statues of him as a placid-looking man 
with a certain divine expression, seated with a 



358 MEDICINE FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS 

scroll on his knees and an air of benignant knowl- 
edge well suited to his profession. 

I called attention in 1907 * to the fact that the 
earliest pictures of surgical operations extant had 
recently been uncovered in the cemetery oi Sak- 
kara near Memphis in Egypt. These pictures 
show that surgery was probably an organized 
branch of medicine thus early, and the fact that 
they are found in a very important tomb shows 
how prominent a place in the community the 
surgeon held at that time. The oldest document 
after that which we have with regard to medicine 
is the " Ebers Papyrus," the writing of which 
was done probably about 1600 B.C. This, how- 
ever, is only a copy of an older manuscript or 
series of manuscripts, and there seems to be no 
doubt that the text, which contains idioms of a 
much older period, or, indeed, several periods, 
probably represents accumulations of information 
made during 2,000 or even 3,000 years before the 
date of our manuscript. Indeed, it is not improb- 
able that the oldest portions of the " Ebers Papy- 
rus " owe their origin to men of the first Egyp- 
tian dj^nasties, nearly 5,000 years B.C. To be 
members of a profession that can thus trace its 
earliest written documents to a time nearly some 
7,000 years ago, is an honor that may be readily 
appreciated and that may allow of some com- 
placency. 

There is a well-grounded tradition which shows 

* Journal of the American Medical Association, November 8, 1907. 



MEDICINE FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS 359 

us that an Egyptian monarch with whose name 
even we are familiar, though we may not he able 
to pronounce it very well — he was Athothis, the 
son of Menes — wrote a work on anatomy. The 
exact date of this monarch's death is sometimes 
said to be 4157 B.C. We have traces of hospitals 
in existence at this time and something of the 
nature of a medical school. Indeed, one may 
fairly infer that medical education, which had been 
developing for some time, probably for some 
centuries, took a definite form at this time in 
connection with the temples of Saturn. Priests 
and physicians were the same, or at least physi- 
cians formed one of the orders of the clergy and 
the teachers of medicine particularly were clergy- 
men. This tradition of close affiliation between 
religion and medicine continued down to the fif- 
teenth century. How few of us there are who 
realize that until the fourteenth century the pro- 
fessors of medicine at the great universities were 
not married men, because members of the faculty, 
as is true at the present time of many members 
of the faculty in the English universities, were 
not allowed to marry. The old clerical tradition 
was still maintaining itself even with regard to 
the medical teachers. 

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this 
early history of medicine in Egypt is that, with 
the very earliest dawn of medical history, we have 
traces of highly developed specialism in medicine. 
There were thirty-six departments of medicine, or 



360 MEDICINE FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS 

at least there were thirty-six medical divinities 
who presided over the particular parts of the 
human body. In the larger temples, at least, 
there was a special corps of priest physicians for 
each one of these departments. Herodotus, the 
Father of History, is particularly full in his details 
of Egyptian history, and though he wrote about 
400 B.C., nearly 2,300 years ago, his attention was 
attracted by this highly developed specialism 
among the Egyptians. He tells us in quaint 
fashion, " Physicke is so studied and practised 
with the Egyptians that every disease hath his 
several physician, who striveth to excell in healing 
that one disease and not to be expert in curing 
many. Whereof it cometh that every corner of 
that country is full of physicians. Some for the 
eyes, others for the head, many for the teeth, 
not a few for the stomach and the inwards." 

It is interesting to realize that the same state 
of affairs upon which you young graduates will 
come now that you are going out to find an op- 
portunity to practise for yourselves at the end of 
the first decade of the twentieth century, is not 
very different from that which the great Father 
of History chronicles as the state of affairs 
among the Egyptians between 600 and 1,000 
before Christ, — let us say about 3,000 years ago. 
You, too, will find that every corner is full of 
physicians, some for the eyes, others for the head, 
many for the teeth, not a few for the stomach 
and everything else under the sun quite as in an- 



MEDICINE FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS 361 

cient Egypt. After a time you will probably find 
that some little corner has been left for you, and 
you will work hard enough to get into it first, 
and then to fill it afterward. The story of how 
young physicians have got on in their first few 
years has probably been interesting at all times 
in the world's history. I think that I know about 
it at five difi'erent periods, and in every one of 
these there seemed to be no possible room, and 
yet somehow room was eventually found, though 
only after there had been a struggle, in the midst 
of which a certain number of the young physi- 
cians found another sphere of activity besides 
medicine. 

Of course it is easy to think that these special- 
ties did not amount to much, but any such thought 
is the merest assumption. A single instance will 
show you how completely at fault this assump- 
tion is. Dentistry is presumed to be a very mod- 
ern profession. As a matter of fact mummies 
were found in the cemetery of Thebes whose 
bodies probably come from before 3000 B.C., who 
have in their teeth the remains of gold fillings 
that were well put in, and show good workman- 
ship, nearly 5,000 years ago.* After dentistry, 
the specialty that we would be sure could not 
have had any significant existence so long ago 
would be that of ophthalmology. As a matter 
of fact, it is with regard to the knowledge of 
eye diseases displayed by these early teachers of 

* Burdett: "History of Hospitals." 



362 MEDICINE FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS 

medicine that the " Ebers Papyrus " is most 
startHng. It is especially full in diagnosis and 
contained many valuable hints for treatment. As 
for laryngology and rhinology, one of the earliest 
medical records that we have, is the rewarding 
by one of the kings of Egypt of an early dynasty 
(nearly 4000 B.C.), of a physician who had cured 
him of a trouble of the nose of long standing, 
that seems to have interfered with his breathing. 
It is easy to think in spite of all this, that the 
Egyptians did not know much medicine; but only 
one who knows nothing about it thinks so. Ac- 
cording to Dr. Carl von Klein, who discussed the 
" Medical Features of the Ebers Papyrus " in the 
Journal of the American Medical Association 
about five years ago, over 700 different sub- 
stances are mentioned as of remedial value in this 
old-time medical work. There is scarcely a dis- 
ease of any important organ with which we are 
familiar in the modern time that is not men- 
tioned here. While the significance of diseases 
of such organs as the spleen, the ductless glands, 
and the appendix was, of course, missed, nearly 
every other pathological condition was either ex- 
pressly named or at least hinted at. The papy- 
rus insists very much on the value of history- 
taking in medicine, and hints that the reason 
why physicians fail to cure is often because they 
have not studied their cases sufficiently. While 
the treatment was mainly symptomatic, it was 
not more so than is a great deal of therapeutics 



MEDICINE FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS 363 

at the present time, even in the regular school of 
medicine. The number and variety of their rem- 
edies and of their modes of administering them is 
so marvellous, that I prefer to quote Dr. von 
Klein's enumeration of them for you: 

" In this papyrus are mentioned over 700 dif- 
ferent substances from the animal, vegetable and 
mineral kingdoms which act as stimulants, seda- 
tives, motor excitants, motor depressants, nar- 
cotics, hypnotics, analgesics, anodynes, antispas- 
modics, mydriatics, myotics, expectorants, tonics, 
dentifrices, sialogogues, antisialics, refrigerants, 
emetics, antiemetics, carminatives, cathartics, 
purgatives, astringents, cholagogues, anthelmin- 
tics, restoratives, hamatics, alteratives, antipy- 
retics, antiphlogistics, antiperiodics, diuretics, dil- 
uents, diaphoretics, sudorifics, anhydrotics, em- 
menagogues, oxytocics, caustics, ecbolics, gal- 
actagogues, irritants, escharotics, caustics, styp- 
tics, haemostatics, emollients, demulcents, protec- 
tives, antizymotics, disinfectants, deodorants, 
parasiticides, antidotes and antagonists." 

Scarcely less interesting than the variety of 
remedies were their methods of administration: 
" Medicines are directed to be administered in- 
ternally in the form of decoctions, infusions, in- 
jections, pills, tablets, troches, capsules, powders, 
potions and inhalations ; and externally, as lotions, 
ointments, plasters, etc. They are to be eaten, 
drunk, masticated or swallowed, to be taken often 
once only — often for many days — and the time 



364 MEDICINE FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS 

is occasionally designated — to be taken mornings, 
evenings or at bedtime. Formulas to disguise 
bad tasting medicaments are also given." We 
have no advantage over the early Egyptians even 
in elegant prescribing. 

With all this activity in Egypt, it is easy to 
understand that the other great nations of an- 
tiquity also have important chapters in the his- 
tory of medicine. The earliest accounts would 
seem to indicate that the Chaldeans, the Assyr- 
ians and the Babylonians all made significant 
advances in medicine. It seems clear that a 
work on anatomy was written in China about the 
year 2000 B.C. Some of the other Eastern nations 
made great progress. The Hindoos in particu- 
lar have in recent years been shown to have ac- 
complished very good work in medicine itself. 
Charaka, a Hindu surgeon, who lived not later 
than 300 B.C., made some fine contributions to 
the medical literature in Hindostani. There were 
hospitals in all these countries, and these provided 
opportunities for the practice of surgery. Lapa- 
rotomy was very commonly done by Hindu sur- 
geons, and one of the rules enjoined by Hindu 
students was the constant habit of visiting the 
sick and seeing them treated by experienced 
physicians. Clinical teaching is often spoken of 
as a modern invention, but it is as old as hos- 
pital systems, and they go back to the dawn of 
history. 

It is among the Greeks, however, that the most 



MEDICINE FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS 365 

important advances in medicine, so far as we are 
concerned, were made. This is, however, not so 
much because of what they did as from the fact 
that they were more given to writing, and then 
their writings have been better preserved for us 
than those of other nations. The first great 
physician among the Greeks was ^sculapius, of 
whom, however, we have only traditions. He is 
fabled to have been the son of Apollo, the god 
of music and the arts, and therefore to have been 
a near relative of the Muses. The connection is 
rather interesting, because sometimes people try 
to remove medicine from among the arts that 
minister to the happiness of man, and place it 
among the sciences whose application is for his 
profit. Medicine still remains an art, however. 
The temples of ^Esculapius were the first hos- 
pitals, though the priests were not the only ones 
who practised medicine, for there were laymen 
who, after having served for some time in the 
hospitals, wandered through the country under 
the name of Asclepiads, treating people who were 
not able to go to the hospitals or shrines. These 
evidently, then, were the first medical schools in 
Greece as well as the first hospitals. 

Six hundred years after ^Esculapius came Hip- 
pocrates, of Cos, the Father of Medicine. He 
undoubtedly had the advantage of many Egyp- 
tian medical traditions and other Oriental medi- 
cal sources, as well as the observations made in 
the hospitals and shrines of ^Esculapius. He 



366 MEDICINE FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS 

wrote some great works in medicine that have 
never grown old. Young men do not read them, 
old men who are over-persuaded of how much 
progress is being made by their own generation 
in medicine neglect them. The busy practitioner 
has no time for them. The great teachers of 
medicine whom all the professors look up to and 
who think for us in each generation turn fondly 
back to Hippocrates, and marvel at his acumen 
of observation and his wonderful knowledge of 
men and disease. Sydenham thought that no one 
had ever written like him, and in our turn we 
honor Sydenham by calling him the English 
Hippocrates. Boerhaave, Van Swieten, Lancisi, 
the great fathers of modern clinical medicine, 
turned with as much reverence to Hippocrates 
as does Osier, the Regius Professor of Medicine 
at Oxford, in our twentieth century. Hippoc- 
rates wrote 2,500 years ago, but his writing is 
eternal in interest and value. 

The famous oath of " Hippocrates, which used 
to be read to all the graduates of medicine, well 
deserved that honor, for it represents the highest 
expression of professional dignity and obliga- 
tion. There is a lofty sense of professional honor 
expressed in it that cannot be excelled at any 
period in the world's history. Among other 
things that Hippocrates required his adepts in 
medicine, his medical students when they gradu- 
ated into physicians, to swear to was the follow- 
ing: "I will follow the system of regimen which 



MEDICINE FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS 367 

according to my ability and judgment I consider 
for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from 
whatever is deleterious and mischievous. I will 
give no deadly medicine to man, woman, or child 
born or unborn. With purity and with holiness 
I will pass my life and practise my art. What- 
ever in connection w^ith my professional prac- 
tice; or not in connection with it, I see or hear 
in the life of men which ought not to be spoken 
of abroad, I shall not divulge, as reckoning that 
all such should be kept secret. While I con- 
tinue to keep this oath inviolate may it be granted 
to me to enjoy life and the practice of my art 
respected by all men in all times; but should I 
trespass and violate this oath maj^ the reverse be 
my lot." 

It is sometimes thought that after the Roman 
medicine, which was an imitation of the Greek 
(though Galen well deserves a place by him- 
self, and Galen is usually thought of as a Roman 
though he wrote in Greek and had obtained his 
education at Pergamos in Asia Minor) , there 
was an interregnum in medicine until our own 
time. This is, however, quite as much of an as- 
sumption as to suppose that the Egyptians had 
no medicine — as we used to until we knew more 
about them — or that old-time medicine is quite 
negligible because we were ignorant of its value. 
The Middle Ages had much more of medicine 
than we are likely to think, and just as soon 
as the great universities arose at the end of the 



368 MEDICINE FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS 

twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth cen- 
turies, medicine gained a new impetus and flour- 
ished marvellously. These university medical 
schools of the later Middle Ages are models in 
their way, and put us to shame in many things. 
According to a law of the Emperor Frederick 
II issued for the Two Sicihes in 1241,* three years 
of preliminary study were required at the uni- 
versity before a student might take up the medi- 
cal course, and then he had to spend four years 
at medicine, and practise for a year under the 
supervision of a phj^sician of experience before he 
was allowed to practise for himself. The story 
of the medicine of this time is all the more won- 
derful because subsequent generations forgot 
about it until recent years, and supposed that all 
of this period was shrouded in darkness. It was 
probably one of the most brilliant periods in 
medical history. Some of the men who worked 
and taught in medicine at this time will never 
be forgotten. 

Probably the greatest of them was Guy de 
Chauliac, a Papal chamberlain, whom succeed- 
ing generations have honored with the title of 
Father of Surgery. His great text-book, the 
" Chirurgia JMagna," was in common use for sev- 
eral centuries after his death, and is full of sur- 
gical teaching that we are prone to think much 

* For the complete text of this law, the first regulating the practice 
of medicine in modern times, also the first pure drug law, see Walsh's 
The Popes and Science. New York, Fordham University Press, 1908. 



MEDICINE FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS 369 

more modern. He trephined the skull, opened 
the thorax, operated within the abdomen, de- 
clared that patients suffering from wounds of 
the intestines would die unless these were sewed 
up, operated often for hernia in an exaggerated 
Trendelenberg position, with the patient's head 
down on a board, but said that many more pa- 
tients were operated upon for hernia " for the 
benefit of the surgeon's purse than for the good 
of the patient." His directions for the treat- 
ment of fractures and for taxis in hernia were 
followed for full four centuries after his time. 
No wonder that Pagel, the great German his- 
torian, declared that " Chauliac laid the founda- 
tion of that primacy in surgery which the French 
maintained down to the nineteenth century." 
Portal, in his " History of Surgery," declares 
that " Guy de Chauliac said nearly everything 
which modern surgeons say, and his work is of 
infinite price, but unfortunately too little read, 
too little pondered." Malgaigne declared " the 
' Chirurgia Magna ' a masterpiece of learned and 
luminous writing." 

Chauliac's * personal character, however, is even 
more admirable than his surgical knowledge. He 
was at Avignon when the black death occurred 
and carried away one-half the population. He 
was one of the few physicians who had the cour- 

* For sketch of Chauliac see Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin, 
1909, or Catholic Churchmen in Science, second series. Dolphin 
Press, Philadelphia, 1909. 



370 MEDICINE FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS 

age to stay. He tells us very simply that he did 
stay not because he had no fear, for he was dread- 
fully afraid, but he thought it his duty to stay. 
Toward the end of the epidemic, he caught the 
fever but survived it and has written a fine de- 
scription of it. He was looked upon as the leader 
of surgery in his time, and this is his advice as to 
what the surgeon should be as given in the intro- 
ductory chapter of his " Chirurgia Magna": 
" The surgeon should be learned, skilled, ingeni- 
ous and of good morals; be bold in things that 
are sure, cautious in dangers; avoid evil cures and 
practices; be gracious to the sick, obliging to his 
colleagues, wise in his predictions; be chaste, 
sober, pitiful and merciful; not covetous nor ex- 
tortionate of money; but let the recompense be 
moderate, according to the work, the means of the 
sick, the character of the issue or event and its 
dignity." No wonder that Malgaigne says of 
him: " Never since Hippocrates has medicine 
heard such language filled with so much nobility 
and so full of matter in so few words." 

The old-time medical traditions of education 
which in the mediaeval universities produced such 
men as William of Salicet and Lanfranc and 
Mondeville and Guy de Chauliac, persisted dur- 
ing the next two centuries in the southern coun- 
tries of Europe, and then were transferred to 
America through Spain. The first American 
medical school was not, as has so often been said, 
at my own Alma Mater, the University of 



MEDICINE FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS 371 

Pennsylvania, which had its first lectures in 1767, 
while the Physicians and Surgeons of New York 
did not come for some ten years later and Har- 
vard only in the following decade, hut in the 
medical school of the University of Mexico, where 
the first lectures were held in 1578, and where a 
full medical school was organized before the end 
of the sixteenth century. In this medical school, 
which during the seventeenth century came to 
have several hundred students, the university 
tradition of the olden time was well preserved. 
Three years of preliminary study at the univer- 
sity were required before a student could take 
up the course in medicine, and four years of 
medical study were required before graduation. 
We have some of the text-books, and know much 
about the curriculum of this old medical school, 
and in every way it is worthy of the old univer- 
sity traditions. 

Unfortunately our universities in what is now 
the United States developed very slowly. King's 
College (Columbia) did not become a university 
in the sense of having law and medical schools 
as well as an undergraduate department until 
the nineteenth century had almost begun. Har- 
vard did not have a law school affiliated with it 
until the first quarter of the nineteenth century 
had almost run its course. The affiliations be- 
tween the medical schools and the universities in 
these cases was only very slight, and the medical 
schools were entirely in the hands of the medi- 



372 MEDICINE FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS 

cal faculty, whose main purpose during a great 
part of the nineteenth century was to make medi- 
cal studies as short as possible and as inexpensive 
as they could possibly be made for the faculty, 
because that left so much more of the fees to be 
absorbed by the historic septennate of professors 
who ruled and managed the university. The con- 
sequence was that during most of the nineteenth 
century two terms of four months each were all 
that was required for the diploma in medicine in 
most American medical schools. Three schools 
maintained a very high standard by requiring 
twenty weeks in each of two calendar years. The 
medical school that was considered one of the best 
in the country, and whose graduates obtained the 
highest marks in the army and navy examina- 
tions, that of the University of Virginia, required 
but two terms of four and one-half months each 
which might be taken in the same calendar year, 
and then gave the doctor's degree. 

It may be as well to say that the doctor's de- 
gree or diploma was a license to practise. There 
were no State regulations for the practice of medi- 
cine, and no matter how obtained, a diploma al- 
lowed practise. As some one has well said the 
diploma, then, was a license to practise, not medi- 
cine, the Lord knows! but to practise on one's 
patients until one had learned some medicine. It 
is out of this slough of despond in medical edu- 
cation that we have climbed in the last thirty- 
five years. We are getting back to the old- 



MEDICINE FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS 373 

time university traditions. Let us hope that we 
shall not allow ourselves to get away from them 
again. There are ups and downs in medical prac- 
tice and medical fashions and medical education, 
and all depends on the men who compose the 
profession at any one time and not on any 
mythical progress that holds them up and compels 
them to do better than those who went before 
them. The highest compliment that can be paid 
to American medicine and medical men is that, 
in spite of this handicap of education they did 
not utterly degenerate, but, on the contrary, 
somehow managed to maintain the dignity of the 
profession and do much good work. 

It is to you to-day, entering on this profession, 
that we look to do your share in keeping up the 
dignity of the medical profession and in maintain- 
ing standards in medical education. We have a 
glorious tradition of 6,000 years behind us with 
the great men of the profession worshipped as 
gods at the beginning, because men thought so 
much of them, and remembered fondly as great 
masters when they came in the after-time. From 
I-em-Hetep through ^sculapius and Hippoc- 
rates and Galen and Guy de Chauliac and 
Sydenham and Boerhaave down to our own time, 
the men whom we delight to honor are the ones 
who did not work with an eye single to their own 
success, but who tried, above all, to do things for 
humanity and for the profession to which they 
belonged. The man who is successful as a money- 



374 MEDICINE FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS 

maker in his profession is only doing half his duty. 
He must make medicine as well as money, that 
is, he must by his observations help others to 
recognize and treat disease better than they did 
before; he must labor for the benefit of humanity, 
and, above all, he must see that there are no de- 
cadence of professional spirit and no deterioration 
of medical education as far as his influence can 
go. It is men of this kind that we hope to send 
forth from Fordham, and you stand in the van 
of them all, and I wish you God-speed. 



UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS 



" Knowledge comes but wisdom lingers." — Tennyson, 
Locksley Hall. 

" The foundation stones of the whole modern structure 
of human wisdom have all been laid by the architects of 
yesterday. Thrice wise is he who knows the quarries and 
builders of by-gone ages and is able to differentiate the 
stones which have been rejected from those which have 
been utilized." — Anon. 



" Ideo Medico id in primis curandum, ut ab aegro cir- 
cumstantias omnes accurate intelligat, intellectas con- 
sideret, ut inter curandum media ilia adhibeat, quae 
tollendo morbo apta sunt, ne ex medicina nocumentum 
proveniat." — Basil Valentine, Triumphal Chariot of 
Antimony. 

[The physician must therefore especially take care that 
he understand all the circumstances of his patient very 
clearly, and after understanding them weigh them well, 
so that during his treatment he may use those means which 
are especially suited to control the disease, lest any harm 
should come from his medicine.] 



UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS* 

It affords me great pleasure to accept the in- 
vitation of your Faculty to address the graduates 
of a university medical school here in the Mid- 
dle West. I wondered, of course, what I should 
talk to you about, and have come to the conclu- 
sion that as an historian of medicine any mes- 
sage I may have for you is likely to come from 
my own subject. It so happens that we are just 
beginning to realize that the history of medicine 
may have much greater significance for us than 
we have usually been accustomed to think, and, 
above all, that it may mean much in furnishing 
incentive for the maintaining and raising of stand- 
ards in medical education. In recent years there 
has come a very decided improvement in medi- 
cal education in the United States. It is not hard 
to understand that the foreigner lifts his eye- 
brows in surprise when he is told that most of 
our medical schools a generation ago required 
but two terms of four months each, and that there 
was then just beginning to be a demand for a 
little more complete course and better facilities. 
There was a large number of medical schools, 
turning out graduates every year with the degree 

* Address to the graduates of St. Louis University Medical and 
Dental Schools, May 31, 1910, at the Odeon, St. Louis. 

377 



378 UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS 

of doctor of medicine, which was a hcense to 
practise in every state in the Union, for there 
were no state or federal laws regulating the prac- 
tice of medicine. As for preliminary require- 
ments the less said the better. If a man could 
write his name and, indeed, he did not have to 
write it very plainly, he found it easy to matricu- 
late in a medical school and to be graduated at 
the end of two scant terms of four months each. 
He might come from the mines, or from the 
farm, or from before the mast, or from the 
smithy, or the carpenter shop ; he need know noth- 
ing of chemistry, nor physics, nor of botany, nor 
of English and, above all, of EngHsh grammar, 
and he was at once admitted to what was called 
a professional school and graduated when he 
had served his time. Practically no one was 
plucked. The desire of the faculty for num- 
bers of students forbade that in most cases. The 
two terms in medicine were not even successive 
courses. The second-year student listened, as a 
rule, to the same lectures that he might have 
heard the preceding year. 

We all know the reason now for this ex- 
tremely low standard of medical education. Pro- 
prietary medical schools made it their one busi- 
ness in life to make just as much out of medical 
education as 23ossible and the historic septennate 
of professors, or sometimes the Dean, pocketed 
the fees (I came near saying spoils) every year, 
and robbed medical American education of what- 



UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS 379 

ever possibilities it might have for the real train- 
ing of young men in the science and art and 
practice of medicine. Perhaps the most interest- 
ing feature of this maintenance of extremely low 
standards in medical education, however, is the 
fact that in spite of it, men, or at least some of 
them, succeeded in obtaining a good foundation in 
medicine and then by personal work afterwards 
came to be excellent practitioners of medicine. 
Professor Welch said not long since : " One can 
decry the system of those days, the inadequate 
preliminary requirements, the short courses, the 
dominance of the didactic lecture, the meagre ap- 
pliances for demonstrative and practical instruc- 
tion, but the results were better than the system. 
Our teachers were men of fine character devoted 
to their duties; they inspired us with enthusiasm, 
interest in our studies and hard work, and they 
imparted to us sound traditions of our pro- 
fession." 

Nothing that I know is a better compliment to 
American enterprise and power of overcoming 
the difficulties of the situation than the life 
stories of some of the men who came from these 
completely inadequate schools. If with the 
maimed training and incomplete education given 
a generation ago American medicine not only suc- 
ceeded in maintaining the dignity of the profes- 
sion to a noteworthy degree, but also developed 
many men who made distinct contributions to 
world medicine, what will we not do now that 



380 UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS 

our medical education is gradually being lifted up 
out of the slough of despond in which it was and 
the preliminary education for medical studies 
set at a standard where real work of thoroughly 
scientific character can be looked for, from the 
very beginning of the medical course? 

Is it any wonder, then, that those of us who 
have the best interests of American medicine at 
heart are watching with careful solicitude the 
movement that is now reforming medical edu- 
cation in this country? The one hope of medical 
education is, and always has been, organic con- 
nection with a university. Real University Medi- 
cal Schools, that is medical schools as the genuine 
Post-Graduate Departments of Universities with 
the fine training that they give, have opened our 
eyes to what is needed in medical education in 
this country. Some of the old-time medical 
schools here in the United States had been con- 
nected by name with universities but this was 
more apparent than real, and the medical faculty 
ruled absolutely in its own department and throt- 
tled medical education and divided the income 
of the college among themselves, devoting as little 
as possible to equipment, to laboratories, to all 
that was needed for medical education. 

Now .has come the epoch of university medical 
schools in this country. I came near saying 
America, but we must not forget that the Span- 
ish-American countries, having adopted their edu- 
cational systems from the mother Latin country, 



UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS 381 

have always maintained the organic connection of 
the medical school with their universities, and as 
a consequence a good preliminary education, the 
equivalent of three years of college work with us, 
is required and has always heen, and then some 
four years in the medical school and, indeed, in 
most of the countries five or six years and in one 
at least seven years of medical study required. 
I have thought, however, that this story of medi- 
cal education in connection with universities and 
real university work will be especially interest- 
ing to the graduates of this thorough Western 
university, whose work in medicine is acknowl- 
edged as up to some of the best standards of 
professional attainment and whose organic con- 
nection with a great university assures not only 
the continuance, but the future development of 
medical education here along lines that shall place 
this among the serious progressive medical schools 
of the world. 

The first university medical school that well 
deserves that name is the one that came into ex- 
istence in connection with the University of Alex- 
andria. I have been at some pains, because it is 
so delightfully amusing, to point out how closely 
the University of Alexandria resembles our mod- 
ern universities in most particulars. It was 
founded by a great conqueror, who had gone forth 
to conquer the world, and having attained almost 
universal dominion sighed for more worlds to 
conquer. Then he set about the foundation of 



382 UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS 

a great city that was to be the capital of his 
empire, and endowed a great institution of learn- 
ing in that capital that was to attract students 
from all over the world. When he died pre- 
maturely the Ptolemys, who inherited the African 
portion of his vast dominions, carried out his 
wishes. JNIoney was no object at Alexandria: they 
put up magnificent buildings, founded a great li- 
brary, bought a lot of first editions of books in the 
shaj^e of author's original manuscripts, stole the 
archives at Athens, used Alexander's collection 
(made for Aristotle) as the foundation of what 
we would call a museum, paid professors better 
salaries than they received at that time anywhere 
else and housed them in palaces. What . a 
strangely familiar sound all this has! Then 
Alexandria proceeded to do scientific work. 

Euclid wrote his geometry, and, unchanged, it 
has come down to us and we still use it as a 
text-book in our colleges. Archimedes, following 
up Euclid's work, laid the foundation, of me- 
chanics in his study of the lever and the screw, 
and of hydrostatics and of optics in his studies of 
specific gravity and burning mirrors and lenses. 
He made a series of marvellous inventions show- 
ing that he was a practical as well as a theoretic 
genius, who would be gladly welcomed, nay, 
eagerly sought for, as a member of the faculty 
even of a university of the highest rank or largest 
income in our modern times. Ptolemy elaborated 
the system of astronomy that had been so ably 



UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS 383 

developed by teachers at Alexandria before his 
time, and Heron invented his engines, which we 
have had as toys in our laboratories for cen- 
turies. We realized the true significance of one 
of them only when the turbine engine was in- 
vented and we found that the principle of it was 
in the toy engine of this old natural philosopher 
of Alexandria. They even did their literature 
scientifically at the University of Alexandria. 
We have no great original works from them in 
literature, but they invented comparative litera- 
ture; for this making the Septuagint translation 
of the Holy Scriptures and doing the same for 
many other religiousr documents of the surround- 
ing nations for comparative stud}^ 

It is rather easy to understand, then, that a 
medical school arose in connection with this scien- 
tific university, and that it did excellent work. 
The collections of Aristotle contained many illus- 
trations which served as the basis for zoology, 
botany, comparative anatomy and probably even 
comparative physiology. The Ptolemys were 
very liberal and allowed dissection of the human 
body, so that human anatomy developed from a 
definite scientific standpoint better then ever be- 
fore. The number of strangers in the town and 
the rather unhealthy climate of Egypt left many 
unclaimed bodies. It has always been the diffi- 
culty of obtaining bodies much more than preju- 
dice against the violation of the human body on 
any general principle, that has been the reason 



384 UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS 

for the absence of human dissection in many 
periods of the world's history. We object to 
having the bodies of friends cut up, but we do 
not mind much if the bodies of those who are 
unknown to us are treated in that way. So 
long as men did not travel much there were few 
unclaimed bodies. With the advent of travel 
came abundant material for dissection and the 
Ptolemys allowed the medical school to use it. 

Two great anatomists built up the structure 
T)f scientific human anatomy on the rather good 
foundation that had been laid on animal anatomy 
in the foretime. After all, the anatomy of the 
animal resembles that x)f man so much that very 
precious knowledge had been gained from zo- 
otomies in the previous ages. These two anat- 
omists were Erasistratos and Heroj)hilos. Both 
of them studied the brain especially, as might 
have been expected. For just as soon as the 
opportunity for dissecting man was provided, this, 
his most complex structure, attracted instant at- 
tention. Herophilos has niamed after him the 
torcular herophili, and the name he gave the curi- 
ous appearance in the floor of the fourth ven- 
tricle — the calamus scriptorius — is still retained. 
He described the membranes of the brain, the 
various sinuses, the choroid plexuses, the cere- 
bral ventricles and traced the origin of the nerves 
from the brain and the spinal cord, recognizing, 
according to well-grounded tradition, the distinc- 
tion between nerves of sensation and motion. 



UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS 385 

He described the eye and especially the vitreous 
body, the choroid and the retina. He did not 
neglect other jDortions of anatomy, however, and 
his power of exact observation, as well as his 
detailed study, may be judged from his remark 
that the left spermatic vein in certain cases joins 
the renal. 

Erasistratos, his colleague, was perhaps even 
a more successful investigator than Herophilos. 
He represented the best tradition of Greek medi- 
cine of the time. He had two distinguished 
teachers, one of them Metrodoros, the son-in- 
law of Aristotle. It was probably through this 
influence that Erasistratos received his invitation 
from the first Ptolemy to come to Alexandria. 
The scientific work of Alexandria was founded 
on Aristotle's collections, on his books, for his 
library was brought to Alexandria as the founda- 
tion of the great University Library, and then 
best of all on the direct tradition of his scientific 
teaching through this pupil of his son-ijti-law. 
Erasistratos' other great teacher was the well- 
known Chrysippos of Cnidos. Cnidos was the 
great rival medical school to that of Cos. Owing 
to the reputation of Hippocrates we know of Cos, 
but we must not ignore Cnidos. 

Erasistratos' discoveries were more in con- 
nection with the heart than anything else. He 
came very near discovering the circulation. His 
description of the valves and of their function 
is very clear. He looked for large-sized anas- 



386 UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS 

tomoses between veins and arteries and, of course, 
did not discover the minute capillaries which 
required Malpighi's microscope to reveal them 
nearly 2,000 years after. Like Herophilos, Era- 
sistratos also studied the brain very faithfully. 

One story that we have of Efrasistratos deserves 
to be in the minds of young graduates in medi- 
cine, because it illustrates the practical char- 
acter of the man and also how much more im- 
portant at times it may be in the practice of 
medicine to know men well rather than to know 
medical science alone. Erasistratos was sum- 
moned on a consultation to Antioch to see the 
son of King Seleucus. Seleucus was one of the 
four of Alexander's generals who, like Ptolemy, 
had divided the world among them after the 
young conqueror's death. His portion of the 
Eastern world, with its capital at Antioch, was 
probably the richest region of that time. There 
had been no happiness, however, in the royal 
household for months because the scion of the 
Seleucid{£, the heir to the throne, was ill and no 
physician had been able to tell what was the mat- 
ter with him, and, above all, no one had been 
able to do anything to awaken him from a leth- 
argy that was stealing over him, making him 
quite incapable of the ordinary occupations of 
men, or to dispel an apathy which was causing 
him to lose all interest in affairs around him. 
He was losing in weight, he looked miserable, he 
seemed really to have been stricken by one of 



UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS 387 

the serious diseases as yet undifferentiated at that 
time which were expressed by the word phthisis, 
which referred to any wasting disease. 

As a last hope then almost, Erasistratos was 
summoned from distant Alexandria as a con- 
sultant in the case of young Seleucus. The pro- 
ceeding, after all, is very similar to what hap- 
pens in our own time. The head of an important 
department in medicine at a university is asked 
to go a long distance to see the son of a reign- 
ing monarch, or of a millionaire prince in in- 
dustry, or perhaps a coal baron, or a railroad 
king, and a special train is supplied for him and 
every convenience consulted. A caravan was sent 
to bring Erasistratos over the desert to Antioch. 
It is such consultations that count in a physician's 
life. I hope sincerely that j^ou shall have many 
of them and that you shall conduct them as suc- 
cessfully as Erasistratos this one. 

The young prince's case proved as puzzling 
to Erasistratos for a time as it had to so many 
other physicians before him. Like the experienced 
practitioner he was, he did not make his diagnosis 
at once, however. Will j^ou remember that when 
you, too, have a puzzling case? It is when we 
do not take time to make our diagnosis that it 
often proves erroneous. Not ignorance, but 
failure to investigate properly, is responsible for 
most of our errors. He asked to see the patient 
a number of times, and saw him under varying 
conditions. Finally, one day, while he was ex- 



388 UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS 

amining the young man's pulse — and I may 
tell 3^ou that Erasistratos made a special study 
of the pulse and knew many things about it that 
it is unfortunate that the moderns neglect — his 
patient's pulse gave a sudden leap and then con- 
tinued to go much faster than it had gone be- 
fore. At the same time there came a rising 
color to the young man's cheek. Erasistratos 
looked up to see what was the cause of this strik- 
ing change, and found that the young wife of 
the King Seleucus, the prince's stepmother, had 
just come into the room. Seleucus, as an old 
man, had married a very handsome young woman, 
and it was evident that the j^oung man's heart was 
touched in her regard, and that here was the 
cause of the trouble. Erasistratos did not pro- 
claim his discovery at once. He did announce 
that now he knew the cause of the trouble, that 
it was an affection of the heart that would be 
cured by travel, and he proposed to take young 
Seleucus back with him to Alexandria. In pri- 
vate, very probably, he told his young patient 
that he had discovered his secret, and then per- 
suaded him that absence would be the thing for 
him. Very probably the young man considered 
that cure was impossible, and with many mis- 
givings he consented to go to Alexandria, and 
as has happened many times before and since, 
in spite of the patient's assurance to the con- 
trary, the travel cure proved effective even for 
the heart affection. 



UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS 389 

I hope sincerely that you shall have as much 
tact, as much knowledge of men and women 
and as much success as this great teacher at the 
first of our modern university medical schools,, 
when the great consultations do come your way, 
for it is easy to understand that when the young 
man recovered 'under the kindly ministrations of 
Erasistratos and the good effect of absence from 
the disturbing heart factor, Erasistratos was 
loaded with the wealth of the East and acquired 
a reputation that made him known throughout 
all the world of that time. There is a curious 
commentary on this story that I think you should 
also know. It is Galen who has preserved the 
incident for us. He does so in the book on the 
pulse, mainly in order to show, as he thinks, 
the fatuity of such observations. After giving the 
details he says, " Of course, there is no special 
pulse of love." Poor Galen, how his wits must 
have been wool-gathering, or how forgetful he 
must have been of his own youth writing in the 
serenity of age, or how lacking in ordinary 
human experience if that is his serious meaning. 
The older man was by far the better observer, 
and I hope that you shall not forget in the time 
to come that there are many things that affect 
men and women besides bacteria and auto-intoxi- 
cations of various kinds and metabolic disturbances 
and nutritional changes. Erasistratos seems to 
have known very well how much the mind, or as 
they called it in the older terminology, and we 



390 UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS 

still cling to the phrase, the heart, meant for 
many a phenomenon of existence supposed to be 
physically pathologic and yet really only repre- 
senting psychologic influences apart from the 
physical side of the being. I may say to you that 
the more you know about these old teachers of 
medicine the more you will appreciate and 
value their largeness of view, their breadth 
of knowledge of humanity and their practical 
ways. 

It is no wonder that students from all over 
the world were attracted to Alexandria for the 
next three centuries because of the opportunities 
for the study of medicine afforded them there. 
After the first century of its existence not as 
much was accomplished as at the beginning, 
because what always happens in the history of 
medicine after a period of successful investiga- 
tion, happened also there. Men concluded that 
nearly everything that could be, had been discov- 
ered and began to theorize. They were sure 
that their theories explained things. Men have 
persisted in spinning theories in medicine. 
Theories have almost never helped us and they 
always have wasted our time. Observation! 
Observation is the one thing that counts. Alex- 
andria continued to have her reputation, how- 
ever, and in the first century of the Christian era 
was the centre of medical interest. It was prob- 
ably here that St. Luke was educated, and as we 
know now from the careful examination of the 



UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS 391 

Third Gospel and of the Acts, he knew his Greek 
medical terms very well. Harnack has shown us 
recently once more how thoroughly Luke con- 
verted the ordinary popular terms of the other 
Evangelists into the Greek medical terms of his 
time. Luke must have known medicine very 
well. His testimony to the miracles of Christ 
is therefore all the more valuable, and so the 
Alexandrian medical school has its special place 
in the order of Providence. 

We are prone to think because of the curious 
way in which not only the histories of medical 
education, but of all education, have been written, 
that while there were some medical schools in the 
interval from the days of Alexandria and Rome 
down to the modern time, these were so hampered 
by unfortunate conditions that men practically 
did nothing in education and, above all, scientific 
and medical education until comparatively recent 
times. Nothing could well be more absurd than 
such an opinion. The great universities founded 
during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries 
attracted more students to the population of the 
countries of the time than go to our universities 
to the number of our population in the present 
time. These universities are the model of our 
universities of the present time and, indeed, the 
history of many of the old European universities 
is continuous for seven centuries. They had an 
undergraduate department in which students 
were trained in grammar, rhetoric, logic, arith- 



392 UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS 

metic, astronomy, music and gymnastics, and 
graduate departments of law, theology and medi- 
cine. Professor Huxley, reviewing mediaeval edu- 
cation, once said that the undergraduate educa- 
tion of the mediaeval universities was better than 
our own. He doubted " that the curriculum of 
any modern university shows so clear and 
generous a comprehension of what is meant 
by culture as this old trivium and quadrivium 
did." 

Their post-graduate work was just as fine as 
their undergraduate work. They made the law 
of the world in the thirteenth century, and laid 
the foundations on which the philosophy and theol- 
ogy of the after-time have been built up. Strange 
as it may seem to many accustomed to give cre- 
dence to far different traditions, they did the same 
thing in medicine. Take as a single example 
what they did for the regulation of medical edu- 
cation and practice. A law of the Emperor 
Frederick II, issued in 1241 for the Two Sicilies 
(Southern Italy and Sicily proper), required 
three years of preliminary training in the ordinary 
undergraduate course at the university before a 
man was allowed to take up medicine, and four 
years at medicine before he got his degree. But 
even this was not all; after graduation, a year of 
practice with a physician was required before 
he was allowed to practise for himself. If he 
were going to practise surgery an extra year of 
the study of anatomy was required. But it may 



UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS 393 

be said by those who cannot persuade themselves 
that the Middle Ages so far anticipated us: since 
they knew almost nothing of medicine and sur- 
gery, what did they spend their time at during 
these four yeats? The more we know about the 
details of that early teaching, the more we respect 
them and the more we admire the magnificent 
work of the old-time professors and their 
schools. 

Probably the most surprising feature of their 
teaching was surgery. We are rather likely to 
think that the development of surgery was re- 
served for our day. Nothing could be more 
untrue. The greatest period in the history of 
surgery, with the possible exception of our own 
time, is the century and a half from 1250 to 
1400. What they taught in surgery we know 
not from tradition, but from the text-books of 
the great teachers which have been preserved for 
us, and which have been recently republished. 
Three men stand out pre-eminent: William of 
Salicet; Lanfranc, who taught at Paris, having 
been invited there from Italy, where he had 
been a pupil of William of Salicet, and Guy de 
Chauliac, to whom has been given by uni- 
versal accord the title of Father of Modern 
Surgery. 

There is practically nothing in modern sur- 
gery that these men did not touch in their text- 
books. Perhaps the most surprising thing is to 
find that William of Salicet, in discussing his 



394 UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS 

cases, suggested that sometimes he succeeded in 
obtaining union by first intention by keeping 
his wounds clean. Alas for the surgery of suc- 
ceeding centuries, Guy de Chauliac, a greater 
mechanical genius than William, insisted that 
union by first intention was an illusion and that 
it could only come through pus formation. 
Laudable pus became the shibboleth of surgery 
for centuries, imposed upon it by the genius of 
a great man. Most men think that they think, 
they really follow leaders, and so we followed 
blindly after Guy until Lister came and showed 
us our mistake. 

Guy was the professor of surgery down at 
Montpellier, and also the physician to the Popes, 
who for the time were at Avignon. His text-book 
of surgery is full of expressions that reveal the 
man and the teacher. He said the surgeon who 
cuts the human body without a knowledge of 
anatomy is like a blind carpenter carving wood. 
He insisted that men should make observations for 
themselves and not blindly follow others. He dis- 
cussed operations on the head, the thorax and the 
abdomen. He said that wounds of the intestines 
would surely be fatal unless sewed up, and he 
described the technique of suture for them. His 
specialty was operation for hernia. There are 
pictures still extant of operations for hernia done 
about this time in an exaggerated Trendelenberg 
position. The patient is fastened to a board by 
the legs, head down, the board at an angle of 



UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS 395 

forty-five degrees against the wall. The intes- 
tines dropped back from the site of operation 
and allowed the surgeon to proceed without dan- 
ger. Guy said that more patients were operated 
on for the sake of the doctor's pocket in hernia 
cases than for their own benefit. His instruc- 
tions to his students, his high standard of pro- 
fessional advice, all show us one of the great 
physicians of all time and historians of medicine 
are unanimous in their praise of him. 

The next great development in medicine came 
at the time of the Renaissance with the reorgan- 
ization of the universities. In the sixteenth cen- 
tury Italy particularly did magnificent work in 
the universities, stimulated by close touch with 
old Greek medicine. At Padua, at Bologna, above 
all, at Rome, the great foundations of the modern 
medical sciences were laid. I need only mention 
the names of Vesalius, Varolius, Eustachius, Fal- 
lopius, Columbus (who'discovered the circulation 
of the blood in the lungs), Cgesalpinus, to whom 
and rightly the Italians attribute the discovery of 
the systemic circulation nearly half a century be- 
fore Harvey. These men all of them did fine 
work, everywhere in Italy. They were doing 
original investigation of the greatest value. 
Whenever anybody anywhere in Europe at this 
time wanted to do good work in science of any 
kind, — astronomy, mathematics, physics and, above 
all, in any of the medical sciences, — he went down 
to Italy; Italy was and continued for five cen- 



396 UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS 

turies after the thirteenth to be what France was 
for a scant half a century in the nineteenth, and 
Germany for a corresponding period just before 
our own time. How curiously the history of 
science and of medicine was written when it seems 
to contradict this. 

Above all, what ridiculous nonsense has been 
talked about Papal opposition to science. The 
great universities of Italy in the thirteenth and 
fourteenth centuries had charters from the Popes. 
They were immediately under ecclesiastical in- 
fluence, yet they did fine work in anatomy and 
surgery. The Father of Modern Surgery was a 
Papal physician. The Papal physicians for seven 
centuries have been the greatest contributors to 
medicine. The Popes deliberately selected as 
their physicians the greatest investigators of the 
time. Besides Guy de Chauliac such men as 
Eustachius, Varolius, Columbus, Cassalpinus, Lan- 
cisi, Malpighi were Papal physicians. We have 
even a more striking testimony to the Papal 
patronage and encouragement of medicine and 
to the Church's fostering care of medical educa- 
tion, here in America. The first university medi- 
cal school in America was not, as has so often 
been said, the medical school of the University 
of Pennsylvania founded in 1767, but the medical 
school of the University of Mexico, where medi- 
cal lectures were first delivered in 1578. Our 
medical schools in this country have only become 
genuine university medical schools in the sense 



UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS 397 

of being organic portions of the university in 
the last twenty-five years. Before that their 
courses were brief and unworthy and no pre- 
hminary education was required. 

The universities of Spanish America from the 
very beginning required three years of prehmi- 
nary training in the university before medicine 
could be taken up, and then four years of medi- 
cal studies. These four years became five and 
six years in certain countries, and at no time 
during the nineteenth century did the medical 
education of Spanish America sink to the low 
level unfortunately reached in the United States, 
The lesson of it is clear. When medical educa- 
tion is seriously undertaken as a university de- 
partment, all is well. When it is not, the results 
are disastrous. 

In our day and country another great awaken- 
ing of university life has come and with it a 
drawing together in intimate union of universities 
and their graduate departments. Above all, the 
medical schools have profited by this closer con- 
nection with university work, and the prospects 
for medical education in the United States and 
a new^ period of wonderful progress in it are 
very bright. You have my hearty congratula- 
tions, then, on your graduation from a great 
university medical school here in the West, and 
I hope sincerely that you shall prove worthy of 
Alma Mater. You have had the privileges of 
university education and these involve duties. 



398 UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS 

This is ever true, though unfortunately it is some- 
what seldom realized. Noblesse oblige. We hear 
much in these days of the stewardship of wealth, 
and do not let us forget that there is a steward- 
ship of talent and education. Much more will 
be demanded of you because of your opportunities, 
and we look for an accomplishment on your part 
far above the ordinary in medical work and main- 
tenance and uplift of professional dignity, that 
shall mean much for your fellows. 

Remember that you are doing only half your 
duty if you but make your living or even make 
money. You are bound besides to make medi- 
cine. For all that the forefathers have done for 
us we in this generation must make return by a 
broadening of their medical views for the benefit 
of posterity. If you were graduates of some 
fourth-rate proj^rietary medical school, perhaps it 
would be sufficient if you succeeded in making 
your living out of your profession. Perhaps 
even your teachers would then be quite satisfied 
with you. No such meagre accomplishment can 
possibly satisfy those who are sending you out 
to-day. Above all, you must remember that your 
education is not for j^ourself, but for the benefit 
of others as well. If, somehow, its influence 
becomes narrowed so as only to affect yourself 
and your intimate friends then it is essentially a 
failure. You must not only live your lives for 
yourselves, but so that at the end of them the 
community shall have been benefited and medicine 



UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCHOOLS 399 

and its beneficent mission to mankind shall be 
broader and more significant because you have 
lived. With this message, then, I welcome you as 
brother physicians and bid you God-speed in your 
professional work. 



THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 



" Non scholae sed vitae discimus." — Seneca, Epist., 106. 
[We learn for life not for school.] 

" Nee si non obstatur, propterea etiam permittitur." — 

Cicero, Philip., xiii, 6. 

[And because a thing is not forbidden that does not make 

it permissible.] 

" Ubicunque homo est ibi beneficio locus est." — Seneca, 

De Vita Beata, 24. 

[Wherever man is there is room to do good.] 

" Then let us not leave the meaning of education am- 
biguous or ill-defined. At present, when we speak in terms 
of praise or blame about the bringing up of each person, 
we call one man educated and another uneducated, al- 
though the uneducated man may sometimes be very well 
educated for the calling of a retail trader, or of a captain 
of a ship, and the like. For we are not speaking of edu- 
cation in this sense of the word, but of that other educa- 
tion in virtue from youth upwards, which makes a man 
eagerly pursue the ideal perfection of citizenship and 
teaches him how rightly to rule and how to obey. This 
is the only training, which upon our view would be char- 
acterized as education; that other sort of training, which 
aims at the acquisition of wealth or bodily strength, or 
mere cleverness apart from intelligence and justice, is 
mean and illiberal, and is not worthy to be called educa- 
tion at all. But let us not quarrel with one another about 
the name, provided that the proposition which has just 
been granted hold good : to wit, that those who are rightly 
educated generally become good men. Neither must we 
cast a slight upon education, which is the first and fairest 
thing that the best of men can ever have, and which, 
though liable to take a wrong direction, is capable of 
reformation. And this work of reformation is the great 
business of every man while he lives." — Plato, Laws 
(Jowett), Vol. IV, p. 174. Scribner, 1902. 



THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE * 

Gentlemen of the Graduating Class: The 
custom is, I fear, for the orator who addresses the 
graduating class to talk over the heads of those 
who have received their degree to the larger audi- 
ence who are assembled for the academic function. 
Now, that I do not propose to do. What I have 
to say is to you. My message is meant entirely 
for you. Since your friends are present I have 
to raise my voice so that they shall hear what 
I have to say, but I consider that they are here 
only on sufferance and that I am here to say 
whatever I can that may mean something for you 
in the careers that are opening up to you. Now, 
I am not of those who think that the main pur- 
pose of the eld is to give advice to the young. 
Man is so fashioned that he wants to get his own 
experience for himself. It is true that " only 
fools learn by their own experience," wise men 
learn by that of others. But then we have divine 
warrant for saying that there used to be a goodly 
proportion of fools in the world and human ex- 
perience agrees in our own time that not all the 
fools are dead yet. Our advice may not be taken 
in all its literalness; that would be too much to 

* This was the address to the graduates at Boston College, June 22, 
1910. 

403 



404 THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 

expect, but it has become an academic custom to 
give it, in the hope that it will be a landmark, 
perhaps an incentive, it may be a warning, surely 
some time a j^recious memory in the time to come. 
Few men who ever lived were less likely to 
think that their advice might mean very much 
than dear old Bobbie Burns, to whom one of your 
number referred, and yet some time I hope that 
in some serious mood you'll read and think well 
on the poetic epistle of advice to his youthful 
friend. There are some lines at the beginning of 
it that have haunted me at times these many years 
when I have been asked to address studious youth 
at the commencement, as our. term for the occa- 
sion so well declares, of their real education in 
the post-graduate courses of that University of 
Hard Knocks which valedictorians at this season 
of the year are so prone to call the cold, cold 
world. The Scottish ploughman bard said in 
the choice English he could so well assume on 
occasion : 

" I long hae tho't, my youthful friend, 

A something to hae sent you. 
Though it may serve no ither end 

Than as a kind memento ; 
But how the subject theme may gang, 

Let time and chance determine; 
Perhaps it may turn out a sang 

Perhaps turn out a sermon." 

One thing is sure, whatever I shall say to 
you shall not be a song, though, alas! addresses 



THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 405 

of advice are prone to sound like sermons. Yet 
the sermon, after all, in the old Latin word 
sermo, is only a discourse, and I am going to 
make mine as brief as possible. It shall, I hope, 
serve to round out some of the things that j^ou 
yourselves have been saying with regard to Catho- 
lics and social works and, above all, CathoKc col- 
lege men in social works. 

We are rightly getting to estimate the value of 
a man in our time in terms of what he accom- 
plishes for others much more than for himself. 
Almost any one who devotes himself with suffi- 
cient exclusiveness to the business of helping 
himself will make a success of it, though some 
may doubt of the value of that success. What 
is difficult above all in our time, when the spirit 
of individualism is so rampant, is to make a suc- 
cess of helpfulness for others while making life 
flow on with reasonable smoothness for one's 
self. I do not hope to be able to impart to you 
the precious secret of how surely to do this, but 
something that I may say may be helpful to you 
in leading a larger than a mere selfish Hfe, so 
that when the end shall come, as come it must, 
though one would never suspect it from the ways 
of men, the world will be a little better at least 
because 3^ou have lived. 

Education has become the fetish of the day 
and the shibboleth by which the Philistine is recog- 
nized from the chosen people of culture and re- 
finement. Popular education has become the 



406 THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 

watchword of the time, and all things are fondly 
hoped for and confidently promised in its name. 
We are somewhat in doubt as to the mode of 
education that will be surely effective for all 
good and we are not quite certain as to how the 
results are exactly to be obtained, but education 
is to make the world better; to get rid gradu- 
ally, yet inevitably, of the evil that is in it; to lift 
men up to the higher plane of knowledge where 
selfishness is at least not supposed to exist, or 
surely to be greatly minimized, where crime, of 
course, shall disappear, and where even the minor 
evils so hide their diminished heads that the mil- 
lennium can not be far distant. It is true that 
some of these glorious promises seem long in ful- 
filment to those who are a little sceptical of the 
influence of particular forms of education that 
are now popular, but, of course, the response 
to that is, that so far we have not had the 
time to have the full benefit of education exert 
itself. 

At the end of the eighteenth century the En- 
cyclopedists in France, in their great campaign 
for the diffusion of information among the people 
and the spread of what they were pleased to call 
education, though some of us are prone to think 
that they hopelessly confused the distinction be- 
tween education for power and education for in- 
formation, confidently promised that when men 
knew enough, poverty, of course, would disappear 
and in its train would go all the attendant evils, 



THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 407 

vice and crime and immorality, and with them, 
of course, unhappiness would disappear from the 
world. That is considerably over a century now, 
but we have not found it advisable as yet to do 
away with courts of law, nor jails, nor policemen, 
nor any of the mechanism of the law for the 
suppression of crime and immorality. Indeed, 
there are those who are unkind enough to say, 
that w^e now have to make use of more means than 
ever in proportion to the population for the sup- 
pression of vice and crime, and that they are 
more emphatically demanded even than at the 
time of the Encyclopedists. As for unhappiness 
and poverty, recent investigations in our large 
cities show so large a proportion 6f people w^illing 
yet unable to obtain a decent living wage, that it is 
quite startling. Our insane asylums are growing 
much more rapidly than the population, and not 
a few of the inmates are there because of im- 
morality. Suicide is on the increase faster than 
the population and unfortunately the greatest in- 
crease is noted in the younger years. It is be- 
tween fifteen and twenty-five that suicides are 
multiplying. 

Of course the answer to this is, that education 
is not as yet carried to that extent among the 
great mass of people which would enable it to 
have its full beneficial effects. Our common 
school education is not enough to bring people 
under the beneficent influence of this great civiliz- 
ing factor for the development of mankind. 



408 THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 

Educators would urge that it is the higher edu- 
cation which serves to obliterate the ills that 
human flesh is heir to, moral as well as physical, 
as far, of course, as that is possible in so imper- 
fect a world as this. If we could but extend the 
advantages of the higher education, of college 
and university training to the majority of the 
people, then say the advocates of education as 
a panacea for human ills, we would surely have 
that approach to the millennium which intellectual 
development by the diffusion of information can 
and must give. 

It is worth while analyzing that proposition a 
little and applying it to present-day conditions as 
we know them. After all we have been turning 
out a large number of those who have had the 
benefit of the higher education from our colleges 
and universities during the last generation or so. 
They have gone out by the thousand to influence 
their fellows and presumably to be shining lights 
for profound improvement of life, striking ex- 
amples that surely will prove an incentive and a 
source of emulation to others to do the right, 
avoid the wrong, be helj^ful instead of selfish and, 
in general, show the world how much education 
means for the happiness of all. There is a slang 
expression familiar in New York just now that 
you in New England may not know, for I under- 
stand that even the owls near Boston do not say 
" to-whit-to-whoo " but " to-whit-to-whoom," that 
may be quoted here: " Some men are born good. 



THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 409 

some make good and some are caught with the 
goods on them." Not all of the graduates of 
colleges and universities were born good, of 
course. I wonder what we shall find with regard 
to the other two phases of existence. There are 
not a few who are critically perverse enough to 
say that, while many have made good, too many 
have been caught with the goods on them. 

Let us take the subject that is so strikingly 
brought before us in our everj^day life in recent 
years, the question of political corruption. Of 
course it is to be presumed that it is the non- 
college men who are both corruptors and cor- 
rupted. It is, of course, just as confidently to 
be presumed, on the other hand, that it is the 
college men who are the forerunners in all the 
exposures of recent years. Alas! for human na- 
ture, it is just the contrary. The leaders in big 
corruption, the mainstays of what has come to 
be called " big political business," have nearly 
all been college men. This has been true in Cali- 
fornia, in Missouri, in Pennsylvania, in New 
York, in Ilhnois. It would be easy to add other 
states, but I am only mentioning those where 
investigations are not yet forgotten, though we 
American peoj^le have cultivated a really mar- 
vellous power of forgetting. The states are 
sufficiently far apart from one another to make 
it ver}^ clear that the condition is not limited to 
a particular locality but is practically universal. 
In recent years we have been getting closer to the 



/ 



410 THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 

man higher up. In a great many of the cases, I 
should say in a majority of them, he has proved 
to be a university man, and if not, then university 
men have been his right hands in the accomphsh- 
ment of evil. The boards of directors of corpo- 
rations, life insurance, fire insurance, railroads, 
great industries and manufactures, even banks, 
who have known that laws were being violated 
and who have not cared because it was money in 
their pockets, have in many cases, perhaps even in 
the majority of cases, been college men. Cer- 
tainly college graduates have not proved to be 
the little leaven that would leaven the whole mass 
for righteousness. 

In the even more dangerous evils of our time 
that have risked the very existence of demo- 
cratic government, in the imposition on the peo- 
ple by the privileged classes of indirect taxes 
and tariffs that make life hard for the poor, but 
add largely to the wealth of the rich, college 
men have only too often been the active agents. 
Without their active co-operation certainly these 
crying, injustices to the poor would never have 
been accomplished. They have often been add- 
ing useless millions to useless millions simply 
for the game, not caring how much the poor had 
to suffer. They have been accumulating at the 
expense of the working classes what Governor 
Hughes of New York so well called, not long 
since, a corruption fund for their children. They 
have been the prime factors in many agencies 



THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 411 

for evil and they have not been the guardians of 
the rights of others, the weaker ones, that we 
have a right to expect of them. In the awful 
evils that have been exposed as a consequence of 
the fellow-servant doctrine and the contributor}^ 
negligence principle at law, which have been the 
root of so much suffering in the world, college 
men have not helped to point out evils and or- 
ganized for the solution of them, though they 
have been closely in contact with all the prob- 
lems of them as judges, lawyers, directors of rail- 
road companies, and industrial concerns. In gen- 
eral, while they have been in a position to know 
and alleviate some of the worst ills of our social 
system, they have done ver}^ little. They helped 
to bind fetters. It is men of much lower social 
station and education who have awakened us. 

The investigations of recent years as to the 
condition of wage-earners have shown us many un- 
fortunate evils. It was known that one in four 
of the population in London was living in dire 
poverty and this was thought to be due to the 
special circumstances in London. An investiga- 
tion of York in England showed, however, that 
smaller towns, even cathedral towns, that were 
supposed to be almost without poverty, were 
hot-beds of it and were nearly as bad as London. 
Then, we took the flattering unction to our souls 
that these were altogether foreign conditions. 
Such investigations as we could make in New 
York, however, showed that we were little if any 



412 THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 

better than the reports from England and Ger- 
many revealed abroad. Then it was said that the 
large city, that brood-oven of vice and misery, 
was responsible. Pittsburg, for instance, set up 
the claim that while great fortunes were made 
there the workmen were paid better wages than 
any place else in the world. Alas for the falli- 
bility of human judgment in social affairs! The 
Pittsburg Survey was made and it was found 
that while a few of the better-class workmen were 
paid very well, the great mass of the workmen 
were awfully underpaid, and it was impossible 
for the majority of them to live decently on 
what they received. Further investigations into 
industrial conditions have only emphasized the 
conclusions obtained from the Survey. 

Human life has become very cheap in this 
countr}^ A prominent clergyman said not very 
long ago that it was safer to be a murderer in 
the United States than a brakeman. The ex- 
pression is true if the proportion of brakemen 
who lose their lives to murderers who lose theirs 
in this country is taken. We are careless of the 
lives of the honest workman, and sentimentally 
over-careful of the lives and comfort of the 
criminal. Every now and then there are in- 
evitable reactions against this laxity of the law, 
and as a consequence, while Canada has no lynch- 
ings and there are none in England, while peo- 
ples of our stock have no need to appeal to force, 
we lynch many more than we execute in this 



THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 413 

country. The leaders of many of the mobs, as the 
directors of the industrial companies who know- 
ingly allow the waste of life to go on, have had 
the benefit of our American education, such as it 
is. Educated people are responsible for things 
that are and unless they meet their responsibilities 
there will be no improvement. 

Some of these abuses have risen to a climax. 
Not long ago a story was told that illustrates, 
as it seems to me, some present-day feelings very 
well. A great steel company having a contract 
for a bridge in the Far East, was rushing the 
last steel beams for the completion of the con- 
tract. America is noted for its marvellous power 
to do work rapidly that other countries take time 
for. There was a heavy penalty attached if they 
did not complete the contract on time. A fast 
steamer was waiting in New York harbor all 
ready to take this last consignment out with it. 
A special train was standing in the j^ards of the 
steel plant, to be rushed to New York just as 
soon as the beams were completed. In the midst 
of all the hurry and bustle a workman got his 
foot caught in the huge crane which trans- 
ports the immense beams from one portion of the 
plant to the other. An examination of the man- 
ner in which he was caught showed clearly that 
he could not be released without taking the crane 
apart. That would mean that thirty-six hours 
would have to be spent in the mechanical handling 
of that crane. If that were done it would be 



414 THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 

quite impossible to make the shipment on time, 
so closely was the period of completion cal- 
culated. Not only was there a heavy money 
penalty, but there would be a decided loss of 
American prestige. 

The workman who was caught was only a for- 
eigner. He was only getting $1.25 a day. Just 
one thing was to be done evidently, because that 
steamer had to sail on time and that freight train 
had to get out the next morning. The other 
foreign workmen were put out of the shops, only 
the confidential men were left, an ambulance was 
summoned; as it appeared in sight the crane was 
run over the portion of the foot that was caught, 
the man was removed to the care of the surgeon, 
his wound was dressed at the hospital, the con- 
tract was comj)leted on time and American enter- 
prise and power to do things faster than all the 
world was vindicated. 

We are making money. In the meantime the 
directors of companies under whom such things 
are done are mainly college men. Whether they 
feel it or not they are personally responsible for 
everything that happens in their business, for 
it is their business by which human life is sacri- 
ficed or human suffering increased, or human 
morality deteriorated. Probably the majority 
of the stockholders in the companies are college 
men. Some of them are college women. They 
are deriving incomes from forms of injustice, 
from conditions that cause human suffering that 



THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 415 

might be avoided. They are, whether they know 
it or not, committing one of the crimes that calls 
to heaven for vengeance — defrauding laborers of 
their wages; because to pay a man less than a 
decent living wage is to defraud that laborer of 
his wages. No man has a right to go into the 
labor market and buy labor as cheaply as he can. 
Men must live, they must support their families, 
and to compel them to take less than a decent 
living wage is to hold them in slavery. Every 
man who derives an income from such sources 
must know whether there is injustice at work 
or not in whatever he benefits by. It is easy to 
plead ignorance, but the ignorance is no justifica- 
tion. When we take money from something we 
must know that that money has no taint of in- 
justice about it. There is a starthng passage in 
the Scriptures that I have often thought should 
be repeated more frequently in our time. It is, 
" From the sins we know not of, O Lord deliver 

US. 

There are many things that are done for the 
educated rich in our time, things that are full of 
injustice, yet from which the rich derive great 
benefits for which they will be held responsible. 
I cannot see it else. We hear much in our time 
of the stewardship of wealth, of the fact that if a 
man has much more money than others he is 
bound thereby to do more good with it, just inas- 
much as he has superfluous means must he ac- 
complish not only actually more but proportion- 



416 THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 

ately more than those who are less wealthy around 
him. What is true thus of material wealth is 
even truer of intellectual wealth. The man who 
has more education than his neighbors is bound 
thereby to be helpful to his neighbors, to uplift 
them — how much one hesitates to use that much- 
abused word, — to help solve their problems, to 
make life happier for them; he is bound to use 
his- faculties, God-given as they are and de- 
veloped by intellectual opportunities, not for him- 
self alone, but for all those around him. 

Unfortunately recent generations of college 
men have not taken this responsibility seriously, 
or have not seen the duty that lay before them 
and the burden imposed on them by the very 
necessity of conditions. As a consequence they 
have often been leaders in evil. They have al- 
most invariably been protagonists of selfishness 
and of individualism. So long as they have 
gotten much out of life they have not cared 
whether others have had the paths for even rea- 
sonable happiness and some opportunities in life 
made smooth. Only too often they have been a 
stumbling block in the road for others less edu- 
cated than they. They have been the men higher 
up, the bribers who are ever so much worse than 
the bribed, the company directors who have turned 
aside and seen evil and injustice and pretended 
in smug propriety that it was no affair of theirs, 
or perhaps have said in self -justification — and 
such self-justification! — that if they did not do it 



THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 417 

others would; the wealthy men who have used 
every means to get around the law to oppress the 
poor, to add useless wealth to useless wealth at 
the cost of others, even at the risk of subverting 
liberty, overturning government and ruining this 
latest experiment in democracy. I am not a 
muckraker, but we cannot hide from ourselves 
and we must not miss the real meaning of the 
events in the life around us as it really is. 

When I think of the situation I am prone to 
compare with it other generations of college men 
and what they accomplished. History is not 
worth while if it tells us only of the past. It is 
of no more value than any other story, real or 
fictitious. History is significant only when the 
lessons of the past are valuable to the present. 
We are prone to think of education as influenc- 
ing deeply only recent generations. Let me try 
and tell you briefly the story of some generations 
of college men who accomplished things that it 
will be worth while for us to consider to-day. 

When the universities came into existence in 
the early thirteenth century social conditions were 
about as bad as can well be imagined. The 
incursions of the Goths had rubbed out all the old 
Roman law and the customs of the various na- 
tions had been obliterated in the disorder of the 
migration of the nations, when might absolutely 
made right. Gradually out of the inevitable 
lawlessness of the Dark Ages the Church, by her 
beneficent influence, brought the beginnings of 



418 THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 

law and order so far as barbarous peoples could 
be lifted up. In the sixth century there was 
nearly everywhere in Europe social chaos. Dur- 
ing the next centuries came the gradual uplift. 
Christianity in Ireland did much even in the 
preceding century, and then helped in the regen- 
eration of Europe in the succeeding centuries. 
Charlemagne helped greatly, as his name chron- 
icles, and Alfred, well deserving of the name 
the Great, carried on his work. In the tenth 
century everywhere the dawn of better things was 
to be seen. In the eleventh century organiza- 
tion of civil rights begins to make itself felt; 
in the twelfth century the universities were com- 
ing into existence; and then with the thirteenth 
century there was a great rejuvenescence of hu- 
manity in every department, but, above all, in the 
social order. Under feudalism men had no rights 
of themselves except such as were conferred on 
them by some external agency. In the thirteenth 
century the essential rights of man begin to make 
themselves felt and find confident assertion. 

It is not hard to trace the steps of the develop- 
ment. Magna Charta was signed in 1215. The 
First English Parliament met in 1257. The rep- 
resentative nature of that parliament became com- 
plete in the next twenty years. The English 
Common Law was put into form about the be- 
ginning of the last quarter of the century and 
in 1282 Bracton published his great digest of it. 
The principle there shall be no taxation without 



THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 419 

representation, our own basis for the Declara- 
tion of Independence five centuries later, was pro- 
claimed as early as 1260 and was emphasized 
by the great Pope Boniface VIII at the end of 
the century. Early in the century, the great 
Lateran Council decreed that every diocese in the 
world should have a college and that the Metro- 
politan Sees at least should have such opportuni- 
ties for post-graduate study as we now call uni- 
versities. The first great Pope of the century, 
Innocent III, laid the foundation of a great City 
Hospital in Rome and required that every bishop 
throughout the world should have one in his See 
and that the model of it should be that of the 
Santo Spirito Hospital in Rome. Leprosy was 
an epidemic disease among the people, somewhat 
as tuberculosis is now ; measures were taken for 
the segregation of lepers, leper hospitals were 
built for them outside of the town, and these great 
generations solved a problem in hygiene as diffi- 
cult as is ours with regard to tuberculosis. 

Above all, the rights of the people were as- 
sured to them. At the beginning of the century 
probably the most striking thing among the popu- 
lation of the various towns, if a modern had a 
chance to visit them, would be the number of the 
maimed and the halt and the blind. We would 
be apt to wonder where were the industrial and 
manufacturing plants responsible for all this 
maiming of the people, and look in vain for the 
belching chimneys of factories or trains. It was 



420 THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 

another form of selfishness that produced crip- 
ples in the twelfth century. Punishment was by 
maiming. For offences against property a man 
lost an eye, or a hand, or a leg. Very often the 
offences were of a kind that we would resent 
punishment for in the modern time. If a man 
were caught poaching on a nobleman's preserves 
of game, and sometimes it was the hunger of 
his children that drove him to it, he lost a hand. 
For a second offence, he lost an eye. For fail- 
ures to pay various taxes, if the offence were 
repeated, maiming was likely to be the conse- 
quence. All this was in as perfect accordance 
with law as our fellow-servant or contributorj^- 
negligence doctrines. So that the sight of the 
maimed person might deter others from following 
this example of recalcitrancy, it was hoped that 
these cripples would not die, though in the im- 
perfect surgery of the time they often did. Al- 
ways the selfish pleasures of the upper classes so- 
called, when they are thoughtless, mean the loss 
of all possibilities of happiness for the lower 
classes. The ways of it all may be different from 
age to age, the results and the responsibility are 
always the same. 

In the thirteenth century all this was changed. 
St. Louis of France sent one of his greatest 
noblemen who had unreasonably punished student 
poachers on a penitential pilgrimage to the Holy 
Land and inflicted a heavy fine, and all notwith- 
standing the protest of the most powerful nobles 



THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 421 

of his kingdom whose rights were invaded. How we 
do always hear ahout the invasion of the rights of 
the entrenched classes. In England men, even men 
without any patent of nobility or clerical privilege, 
began to have rights and others had duties to- 
wards them. Above all, men were given oppor- 
tunities to bring out what was best in them. The 
great cathedrals were built, the great monasteries, 
some of the greatest castles, some of the fine 
colleges at the universities. Many of the muni- 
cipal buildings were erected in the glorious archi- 
tecture of the times. At these men were em- 
ployed in what is probably the happiest work that 
a man can do. They had the chance to express 
themselves in the beautiful achievements of their 
hands. The village blacksmith made gates, and 
locks, and bolts, and hinges for cathedrals that are 
so beautiful that all the world has wondered at 
them ever since. The stained glass is the finest 
ever made. The illuminated books are beautiful 
beyond description, the handsomest of all times. 
The needlework of the vestments stands out as 
the most beautiful in history. The men and 
M^omen who did these things were happy in the 
execution of beautiful works of art, and as the 
population was only scanty a large proportion 
of them were closer to beautiful things than the 
world has ever known. 

Blessed is the man who has found his work. 
These men had found their work and were happy. 
Instead of going out to the deadly routine of 



422 THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 

work they did not like, but that they had to do, 
because they must earn enough so as to get bread 
enough to eat for themselves and family, so that 
they might live and go out and work once more 
to-morrow and to-morrow, and so on to the end 
of recorded time, the workman dreamt of the 
beauty that he might express; went out hoping 
to achieve it ; failed often but still hoped, and hope 
is life's best consolation; came away reluctantly, 
thinking that surely he would accomplish some- 
thing on the morrow. It is the difference between 
mere routine work and the handicraftsmanship 
that satisfies because it occupies the whole man. 
Is it any wonder that our workman is discon- 
tented; is it any wonder that the England of that 
time should be called merrj^ England and the 
France and Italy gay France and Italy? 

All this organization of the workmen was ac- 
complished by the university men of the time. 
They were mainly clergymen, but they had in 
them not only the wish, but the faculty to help 
those around them, and so there arose the beauti- 
ful creations of that time in art, architecture, lit- 
erature and political freedom which did so much 
for the masses of the people. There were more 
students at the universities at the end of the 
thirteenth centui*y to the population of the vari- 
ous countries of Europe than there are at the 
present time. That seems impossible, but so do 
all the other achievements of the thirteenth cen- 
tury, — their cathedrals, their arts and crafts, their 



THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 423 

universities, their literature, — until you go back to 
study them. There is absolutely no doubt about 
these statistics. These university men were 
trained to self-government and to the government 
of others in the university life of the time. They 
took that training out with them, not for selfish 
purposes alone, but for the help of others. What 
they accomplished is to be found in the social up- 
lift that followed. There is scarcely a right or 
a development of liberty that we have now that 
cannot be found, in germ at least, often in com- 
plete evolution, in the thirteenth century. The 
Supreme Courts of most of our states still make 
their decisions following the old English common 
law which was laid down in that century. 

But it will be said, while so much was done 
for the workman, have we not heard that his 
wages were a few cents, almost nothing, and that 
his hours were long and he was little better than 
a slave? Only the first portion of this has any 
truth in it. He did get what seems to us a mere 
pittance for his day's wages. As pointed out by 
M. Urbain Gohier, the French socialist, when he 
visited this country to lecture a few years ago, 
the workmen of this time had already obtained the 
eight-hour day, the three eights as they are 
called, eight hours of work, eight hours for sleep 
and eight' hours for themselves. Besides they 
had the Saturday half-holiday, or at least, after 
the Vesper hour, work could not be required of 
them, and there was more than one holy-day of 



424 THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 

obligation every two weeks, on which they did 
not work, and on the Vigil of which work ceased 
at four o'clock. As for their wages, by Act of 
Parliament they got fourpence a day at the end 
of the century and this does not seem much, but 
the same Act of Parliament set the minimum 
wage and the maximum price that could be 
charged for the necessities of life. A pair of 
hand-made shoes could be bought for fourpence, 
and no workman can do anything like that for 
a day's wage at the present or usually for more 
than double his daily wages. A fat goose cost 
but twopence halfpenny, and when the father of 
a family can buy two fat geese for his daily 
wages, there is no danger of the family starv- 
ing. Our wages are higher, but the necessities 
of life have gone up so high that the wages can 
scarcely touch them. 

In the parliament that passed these laws the 
greater proportion were college men. I suppose 
probably three-fourths of the members of both 
houses had been at the university. Now that 
the question of the abolition of the House of 
Lords is occupying much attention, we sometimes 
hear of it as a medieval institution. It is spoken 
of as an inheritance from an earlier and ruder 
time. I wonder how much the people who talk 
thus know about the realities. They must be 
densely ignorant of what the House of Lords 
used to be. At the present moment there are in 
the English House of Lords 627 members, only 



THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 425 

75 of whom do not owe their position directly or 
solely to the accident of birth. Even about half 
of this seventy-five can only be selected from 
the hereditary nobility of Scotland and of Ireland. 
In the Middle Ages it was quite different. Until 
the reformation so-called the Lords Spiritual 
formed a majority of the House of Lords. They 
consisted not only of the bishops but of the ab- 
bots and priors of monasteries and the masters of 
the various religious and knightly orders. This 
upper chamber of the olden time was elected in 
the best possible sense of the word. They were 
usually men who had risen from the ranks of the 
people and who had been chosen because of their 
unselfishness to be heads of rehgious houses and 
religious orders. There were abuses by which 
some of these Lords Spiritual obtained their 
places by what we now call pull, but the great 
majority of them were selected for their virtues, 
and because they had shown their power to rule 
over themselves had been chosen to rule over 
others. 

They were men who could own nothing for 
themselves and families, and in whom every mo- 
tive, human and divine, appealed to make life as 
happy as possible for others. They were all of 
them university men. Compare for a moment 
the present House of Lords with that House of 
Lords and you will see the difference between 
the old time and the present. No wonder Eng- 
land was merry England, no wonder historian 



426 THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 

after historian has declared that the people were 
happier at this time than they have ever been be- 
fore or since, no wonder men had leisure to make 
great monuments of genius in architecture, in the 
arts and in literature. No wonder the universities, 
in the form in which they have been useful to 
mankind ever since, were organized in this cen- 
tury; no wonder all our rights and liberties come 
to us. Great generations of the university men 
nobly did their work. 

Young, men, you are graduating from a college 
that is literally a lineal descendant of those old- 
time universities. You have had the training 
of heart and of will as well as of mind that was 
given to these students of the olden times. You 
have been taught that the end of life is not self, 
but that life shall mean something for others as 
well as yourself, that every action shall be looked 
at from the standpoint of what it means for 
others as well as for yourselves, and that you shall 
never do anything that will even remotely injure 
others. 

You are not only going to lead honest but 
honorable lives. You are going to be true to 
yourselves first, but absolutely faithful to others. 
They are telling a story in New York now that, 
perhaps, some of you have heard. It is of the 
young man who had graduated at the head of his 
class at the high school and delighted his old 
father's heart. He kept up the good work, and 
came out first in his class at college. Then, when 



THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 427 

he led a large class at the law school, you can 
understand how proud the old gentleman was. 
Tom came home to practise law in a long-estab- 
lished firm where there was an opening for him. 
Some six months later he said, one day, to his 
father, " Well, I made $10,000 to-day," and the 
old gentleman said, " Well, Tom, that is a good 
deal of money to make. I hope you made it 
honestl}^" The young man lifted his head and 
said, " You can be sure that I would not make 
it dishonestly." " That is right," the old man 
said. " Tell us how it came about." Then Tom 
told how he knew that a trolley line was going 
to run out far from town and that he. had secured 
an option on some property through which it 
was going to pass. " You know old Farmer 
Simpson out on the Plank Road?" he said. 
» " His boys have left him and gone to the city; 
he cannot work his farm any longer himself, and 
he cannot hire men for it, and he wants to get 
rid of it. I got j)ositive information yesterday 
through one of our clients that a trolley line is 
going out through that farm. When I went out 
to see the old man he knew me at once, spoke 
about you, and when I offered to try to sell the 
farm for him and suggested the advisability of 
signing an option on it to me at a definite figure, 
so that I may be able to close the price with any 
one who wanted it, he signed at once^at a ridicu- 
lously low figure because, though, as he said, he 
did not care to sign the papers for lawyer folk. 



428 THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 

he knew I was different. I have got the farm at 
so low a price that $10,000 is the smallest profit 
I can look for. I think I will get that profit out 
of the company for the right of way, and then I 
will have the rest of the farm for myself. It will 
make a mighty nice country place." 

Then there was a pause. The old gentleman 
did not lighten up any over the story, as Tom 
seemed to think he would. After a minute's 
silence the old man said, " Well, Tom, that was 
not what I sent you to college and law school 
for, to come out here and take advantage of my 
old neighbors; I thought that you would be 
helpful to us all, and that there would be more of 
haj^piness in the world because of your education. 
You may call that transaction honest, and per- 
haps it is legal, but I know that it is dishonorable. 
Tom, if you don't give Farmer Simpson back his 
option I do not think I want you to live here 
with me any more. Somehow I couldn't feel as 
if I could hold up my head if ever I passed 
Farmer Simpson and his wife, if you did. You 
may act as his attorney if you will and take a 
good fair fee for it, but you must not absorb all 
the profits just because the old man is in trouble 
and is glad to trust an old neighbor's son." 

Of course Tom's father was dreadfully old- 
fashioned and out of date. Of course there are 
some people who will say that this sort of thing 
is quixotic. Now, this sort of thing is what higher 
education should mean, and does mean, in a 



THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 429 

Catholic college. Your principles are not taught 
you for the sake of exercises of piety, nor attend- 
ance at religious duties. These you have got to 
do anyhow, but they are meant to inflow into 
every action of your life and to make the basic 
principle of them all, " Thou shalt love thy neigh- 
bor as thyself." 

You are graduating from a Catholic college 
with high aims, you have had many advantages, 
more than are accorded usually in our time to 
men of your years in the training of heart and 
will as well as intellect, and much is expected of 
you. You are rich in real education and a stew- 
ardship of great intellectual and moral wealth is 
given over to you, and you must be better than 
others and be, above all, ever helpful to others. 
Your education was not given for your benefit, 
but for that of the community. Your neighbors 
are all round you. See that at the end of your life 
they shall all be happier because you have lived. 
If you do not do so you shall sadly disappoint the 
hopes of your teachers and, above all, you ,shall 
be false to the trust that has been confided to you. 

Pass on the torch of charity. Let all the world 
be dear to you in the old-fashioned sense of that 
dear old word charity, not merely distantly 
friendly in the new-fangled sense of the long 
Greek term philanthropy. Be just while you are 
living your lives and you will not have the burden 
of philanthropy that so many rich men are now 
complaining of in your older years, and, above all, 



430 THE COLLEGE MAN IN LIFE 

you will not have the contempt and aversion of 
those who may accept your bounty, but who know 
how questionably you acquired the means of giv- 
ing it and are not really thankful. 

I have done but for just one word. Be just 
and fear not. If you will be just in your dealing 
with men, you will have no need for further ad- 
vice and no need for repentance. I thank you. 



NEW ENGLANDISM 



" It isn't so much the ignorance of mankind that makes 
them ridiculous as tlie knowing so many things that ain't 
so." — Josh Billings, writing as ^ Uncle Esek " in the 
" Century." 



NEW ENGLANDISM * 

There is a little story told of a supposed re- 
cent celestial experience, that seems, to some peo- 
ple, at least — perhaps it may be said without 
exaggeration, to most of those alas! not born in 
New England — to illustrate very well the attitude 
of New Englanders, and especially of the Bos- 
tonese portion of the New England population, 
towards all the rest of the world and the heavens 
besides. St. Peter, the celestial gate-keeper, is 
supposed to be disturbed from the slumbers that 
have been possible so much oftener of late years 
because of the infrequent admissions since the 
world has lost interest in other-worldliness, by an 
imperious knocking at the gate. " Who's there? " 
he asks in a very mild voice, for he knows by 
long experience that that kind of knocking usu- 
ally comes from some grand dame from the ter- 
restrial regions. The reply, in rather imperative 

* The material for this was collected for a banquet address in 
Boston on Evacuation Day, 1909, before the Knights of Columbus. 
It was developed for various lectures on the history of education, in 
order to illustrate how easy it is to produce a tradition which is not 
supported by historical documents. In its present form it appeared 
as an article in the West Coast Magazine for July, 1910, at the request 
of the editor, Mr. John S. Mc'Groarty, with whom, more years ago 
than either of us care to recall now, I had learned the New England 
brand of United States history at a country school. 

433 



434 NEW ENGLANDISM 

tone, is, " I am Mrs. Beacon from Boston," with 
emphasis on the Boston, " Well, madam," Peter 
says in reply, " you may come in, but," he adds 
with a wisdom learned doubtless from many pre- 
vious incidents of the same kind, " you won't like 
it." 

Of course, the thoroughgoing admiration of 
New England people, and especially of Boston- 
ians, for all that is New England, and, above all, 
all that is Boston, has been well recognized for a 
long while and has not failed of proper appre- 
ciation, to some degree at least, even in New 
England itself. To Oliver Wendell Holmes we 
owe that delightful characterization of it in the 
" Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," " Boston 
State House is the hub of the solar system. You 
could not pry that out of a Boston man (and a 
fortiori I think it may be said out of a Boston 
woman) if you had the tire of all creation straight- 
ened out for a crowbar." James Russell Lowell 
expressed the same idea very forcibly in other 
words in some expressions of his essay on "A 
Certain Condescension in Foreigners," that have 
been perhaps oftenest quoted and are dear to 
every true New Englander's heart. Of course, 
he meant it a great deal more than half in jest, 
but who of us who know our Down Easterners 
doubt that most of them take it considerably 
more than half in earnest? Their attitude shows 
us very well how much the daughter New Eng- 
land was ready to take after mother England in 



NEW ENGLANDISM 435 

the matter of thinking so much of herself that 
she must perforce be condescending to others. 

Lowell's exj)ression is worthy to be placed be- 
side that of Oliver Wendell Holmes for the 
guidance of American minds. They are keys to 
the situation. " I know one person," said Lowell, 
" who is singular enough to think Cambridge 
(Mass.) the very best spot on the habitable globe. 
' Doubtless God could have made a better, but 
doubtless he never did.' " It only needed his 
next sentence fully to complete the significance of 
Boston and its academic suburb in the eyes of 
every good Bostonian. " The full tide of human 
existence may be felt here as keenly as Johnson 
felt it at Charing Cross and in a larger sense." 

Of course there is no insuperable objection to 
allowing New Englanders to add to the gayety 
of nations in this supreme occupation with them- 
selves, and we would gladly suffer them if only 
they would not intrude their New Englandism 
on some of the most important concerns of the 
nation. But that is impossible, for New Eng- 
landism is most obtrusive. It is New England 
that has written most of the history of this 
country and its -influence has been paramount on 
most of our education. It has supplied most of 
the writers of history and moulded most of the 
school-teachers of the country. The consequence 
has been a stamping of New Englandism all over 
our history and on the minds of rising genera- 
tions for the better part of a century, with a 



436 NEW ENGLANDISM 

perversion of the realities of history in favor of 
New England that is quite startling when at- 
tention is particularly directed to it. 

The editors of the " Cambridge Modern His- 
tory," in their preface, called attention to the 
immense differences between what may be called 
documentary and traditional history. They de- 
clare that it has become " impossible for historical 
writers of the present age to trust without reserve 
even to the most respected secondary authorities. 
The honest student finds himself continually de- 
serted, retarded, misled, by the classics of his- 
torical literature, and has to hew his own way 
through multitudinous transactions, periodicals, 
and official publications in order to reach the 
truth." Most people reading this would be prone 
to think that any such arraignment of American 
history, as is thus made by the distinguished Cam- 
bridge editors of history in general, would be 
quite out of the question. After all, our history, 
properly speaking, extends only over a couple of 
centuries and we would presumably be too close 
to the events for any serious distortion of them 
to have been made. For that reason it is inter- 
esting to realize what an unfortunate influence the 
fact that our writers have come mainly from New 
England and have been full of the New England 
spirit, has had on our American history. 

Every American schoolboy is likely to be pos- 
sessed of the idea that the first blood shed in the 
Revolution was in the so-called Boston Massacre. 



NEW ENGLANDISM 437 

It is well known that that event thus described 
was nothing more than a street brawl in which 
five totally unarmed passers-by were shot down 
without their making the slightest resistance, as 
an act of retaliation on the part of drunken 
soldiers annoyed by boys throwing snowballs at 
them. This has been magnified into an important 
historical event. Two months before it, however, 
there was an encounter in New York with the 
citizens under arms as well as the soldiers, and it 
was at Golden Hill on Manhattan Island and not 
in Boston that the first blood of the Revolution 
was shed. Miss Mary L. Booth, in her " History 
of the City of New York," says: "Thus ended 
the Battle of Golden Hill, a conflict of two 
days' duration, which, originating as it did in 
the defense of a principle, was an affair of which 
New Yorkers have just reason to be proud, and 
which is worthy of far more prominence than 
has usually been given it by standard historians. 
It was not until nearly two months after that 
the Boston Massacre occurred, a contest which 
has been glorified and perpetuated in history, 
yet this was second both in date and in sig- 
nificance to the New York Battle of Golden 
Hill." 

Practically every other incident of these times 
has been treated in just this way, in our school 
histories at least. Every American schoolboy 
knows of the Boston tea party, and usually can 
and does tell the story with great gusto because 



438 NEW ENGLANDISM 

it delights his youthful dramatic sense. Not only 
the children, but every one else seems to think 
that the organization of the tea party was entirely 
due to the New England spirit of resistance to 
" taxation without representation." How few of 
them are taught that this destruction of the tea 
had been definitely agreed upon by all the colonies 
and that it was only by chance that Massachusetts 
happened to be first in the execution of the 
project. My friend, Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, 
in his article on " Some Popular Myths of 
American History," in the Magazine of History 
(February, 1905), has stated this aspect of the 
question very forcibly. " Previous to the arrival 
of the ships in Boston, concerted action had 
been agreed upon, as has been already shown, 
in regard to the destruction of the tea, from 
Charleston, S. C, to Portsmouth, N. H. The 
people of Philadelphia had been far more active 
and outspoken at the outset than they of Boston, 
and it was this decisiveness which caused the 
people of Boston to act, after they had freely 
sought beforehand the advice and moral sup- 
port of the other colonies." 

It would be utterly unjust to limit the move- 
ment which culminated in the Boston Tea Party 
to any one or even several of the colonies; to 
make so much of the Boston incident is to falsify 
history in fact, but, above all, in the impression 
produced upon the rising generation that Boston 
was a leader in this movement. The first tea- 



NEW ENGLANDISM 439 

ship arrived in Boston November 28, 1773, and 
two others shortly after, but it was not until the 
evening of December 16th that their contents 
were thrown overboard. Over six weeks before 
this a precisely similar occurrence had taken place 
in New York without any such delay, and though 
the movement proved futile because it was under- 
taken on a false alarm, it is easy to understand 
that due credit should be given to those who took 
part in it for their thoroughgoing spirit of oppo- 
sition to British measures. On this subject once 
more Dr. Emmet, whose great collection of 
Americana made him probably more familiar with 
the sources of American history than any one of 
our generation, has been, in the article already 
quoted, especially emphatic. 

" On November 5, 1773, an alarm was raised 
in the City of New York to the effect that a tea- 
ship had entered the harbor. A large assembly 
of people at once occurred, among whom those 
in charge of the movement were disguised as 
Mohawk Indians. This alarm proved a false one, 
but at a meeting then organized a series of reso- 
lutions was adopted which was received by the 
other colonies as the initiative in the plan of re- 
sistance already determined upon throughout the 
country. Our schoolbooks are chiefly responsible 
for the alii^ost universal impression that the de- 
struction of tea, which occurred in Boston Har- 
bor, was an episode confined to that city, while the 
fact is that the tea sent to this country was either 



440 NEW ENGLANDISM 

destroyed or sent back to Edigland from every 
seaport in the colonies. The lirst tea-ship hap- 
pened to arrive in Boston and the first tea was 
destroyed there; for this circumstance due credit 
should be given the Bostonians. But the fact that 
the actors in this affair were disguised as Mohawk 
Indians shows that they were but following the 
lead of New York, where this particular disguise 
had been adopted forty-one days before, for the 
same purpose." 

Just as the Boston Massacre has been insistently 
pointed out as the first blood shed for American 
liberty, so the Battle of Lexington has been drilled 
into our school children's minds as the first organ- 
ized armed resistance to the British. Without 
wishing at all to detract from the glory of those 
who fought at Lexington, there is every reason 
not to let the youth of this country grow up with 
the notion that JNIassachusetts was the first to put 
itself formally under arms against the mother 
country. Lexington was not fought until April 
19, 1775. The battle of Alamance, N. C, which 
occurred on INIay 16, 1771, deserves much more 
to be considered as the first organized resistance 
to British oppression. The North Carolina Regu- 
lators rather than the New England JNIinute Men 
should have the honor of priority as the first armed 
defenders of their rights against encroachment. 
The subject is all the more interesting because 
the British leader who tried to ride rough-shod 
over stout Americans in North Carolina and met 



NEW ENGLANDISM 441 

with open opposition was the infamous General 
Tryon of subsequent Connecticut fame. Every 
one knows of his pernicious activity in Con- 
nectic\it, very few that he had been previously 
active in North Carolina. That is the difference 
between history as "it has been written " for New 
England and the South. That the Battle of Ala- 
mance was no mere chance engagement, and that 
the North Carolinians were aflame with the real 
spirit that finally gave freedom to the colonies, can 
be best realized from the fact that the first Decla- 
ration of Independence was made at ^lecklenberg 
in North Carolina, and that some of its senti- 
ments, and even perhaps its phrases, were adopted 
in the subsequent formal Declaration of Inde- 
pendence of all the colonies. 

For those who may be surprised that North 
Carolina should have been so prominent in these 
first steps in Revolutionary history and these 
primary developments of the great movement that 
led to the freedom of the Colonies, for we are 
accustomed to think of North Carolina as one of 
the backward, unimportant portions of the coun- 
try, it may be well to say that at the time of 
the Revolution she was the third State in the 
Union in population, following Virginia and 
Pennsylvania in the number of inhabitants, ex- 
ceeding New York in population by the total 
census of New York City and Long Island, and 
ahead of JMassachusetts, which immediately fol- 
lowed it in the list by almost as many. The sturdy 



442 NEW ENGLANDISM 

inhabitants of the northern of the CaroHnas had 
been for a decade before the Revolution con- 
stantly a thorn in the side of the British govern- 
ment and had been recognized as leaders in the 
great movement that was gradually being organ- 
ized to bring all the colonies together for mutual 
help against the encroachments of the British 
government on their rights. Our school children 
fail almost entirely to know this because they 
have been absorbed by Massachusetts history — 
but then North Carolina did not have the good 
fortune to have writers of history. New England 
had them and to spare, and with a patriotic zeal 
for their native heath beyond even their numbers. 
Of course it may be said that these are old- 
time historical traditions which have found their 
way into history and are difficult to get out, 
though most of those who know any history real- 
ize their absurdity, and the modern historian, even 
though he may be from New England, holds the 
balance much more equitably between the dif- 
ferent portions of the country. Aj)parently this is 
just what is not true, for New England professors 
of history and writers of history still continue to 
write in the same old strain of such surpassing 
admiration for New Englanders that every other 
portion of the country is cast into shadow. It 
was a distinguished professor of history at Har- 
vard who, within five years, in an important his- 
torical work,* said: " Whatever the social mixture 

* " The American Nation," 27 vols. 



NEW ENGLANDISM 443 

of the future, one thing is certain; the standards, 
aspirations and moral and political ideas of the 
original English settlers not only dominate their 
own descendants, but permeate the body of im- 
migrants of other races — the Puritans have fur- 
nished the little leaven that leavens the whole 
lump." 

One wonders just what such a sentence means 
and, of course, finds it in many ways amazingly 
amusing. One would think that the only Eng- 
lish settlers were the Puritans, and that they had 
had great influence in the origin of our govern- 
ment. Apparently, for the moment at least, this 
Harvard professor forgot in his enthusiasm for 
the forefathers in Massachusetts that the other 
branch of English settlers, those of Virginia, 
were ever so much more important in the colonial 
times and for long afterwards, than the Puritans. 
Of the first five Presidents four were from Vir- 
ginia. It is possible they forget now, in Massa- 
chusetts, that only one was from Massachusetts, 
and that that one did more to disturb govern- 
ment " of the people, by the people, and for the 
people " than any other, so that after four short 
years the country would have no more of him 
and no more of these Massachusetts Puritans for 
more than a quarter of a century. This dear, 
good professor of Harvard has deliberately 
called all the non-English elements in our popu- 
lation foreigners because of his absorption in New 
England. He said: " If the list of American 



444 NEW ENGLANDISM 

great men be scanned the contribution of the 
foreigner stands out clearly. The two greatest 
financiers of America have been the English West 
Indian Alexander Hamilton and the Genevan 
Albert Gallatin. Two Presidents, Van Buren 
and Roosevelt, are of Dutch stock; five others, 
Jackson, Buchanan, Grant, Arthur and McKinley 
of Scotch and Scotch-Irish descent." All " for- 
eigners " except the New Englanders ! Save the 
mark ! 

It is rather interesting to find that their con- 
temporaries of the Revolutionary period did not 
share that high estimation of the New England- 
ers which they themselves clung to so tenaciously 
and have writ so large in our history that the 
tradition of New England's unselfish wonder- 
working in that olden time has never perished. 
Most of us are likely to know something about 
the rather low estimation, at most toleration, in 
which during the Revolutionary period many of 
the members of Congress from New England 
were held by fellow-members of Congress from 
other portions' of the country. They were the 
most difficult to bring into harmony with others, 
the slowest to see anything that did not directly 
enhance the interests of New England; they were 
more constantly in opposition to great move- 
ments that meant much for the future of the 
colonies themselves and the government of the 
United States afterward than any others. We 
are prone to excuse this, however, on the score 



NEW ENGLANDISM 445 

of their intolerant Puritanism, and taught by our 
New England schoolmasters, most of us, at least, 
fondly cherish the notion that all the New Eng- 
landers made supreme sacrifices for the country 
and did it with a whole-hearted spirit of self- 
forgetfulness that made every man, above all in 
jNIassachusetts, an out-and-out patriot. It is curi- 
ous to find how different were the opinions of 
those from other portions of the country who 
came in contact with New Englanders at this 
time, from that which is to be found in their 
histories. 

Washington, for instance, had by no means 
the same high opinion of the New Englanders, 
and, above all, of the New England troops, that 
they had of themselves and that their historians 
have so carefully presented of them. It is said 
that Sparks edited many of Washington's criti- 
cisms of New Englanders out of his edition of the 
" Life and Letters." Certain it is that some of 
the letters which Sparks did not consider it proper 
to quote from, contain material that is very inter- 
esting for the modern historian who wants to get 
at contemporary documents, and for whom con- 
temporary opinions such as that of Washington 
cannot but seem especially valuable. In a letter 
from the camp at Cambridge, August 20, 1775, 
to Lund Washington at INIt. Vernon, Washing- 
ton said: "The people of this Government 
[Massachusetts] have obtained a character which 
they by no means deserve; their officers, generally 



446 NEW ENGLANDISM 

speaking, are the most indifferent kind of people 
I ever saw. I have already broke one colonel and 
five captains for cowardice, and for drawing more 
pay and provisions than they had men in their 
companies. There are two more colonels now 
under arrest and to be tried for the same offenses; 
in short, they are by no means such troops, in 
any respect, as you are led to believe of them 
from the accounts which are published; but I 
need not make myself enemies among them by 
this declaration, although it is consistent with 
truth. I dare say the men would fight very 
well (if properly officered), although they are an 
exceedingly dirty and nasty people. Had they 
been properly conducted at Bunker's Hill (on 
the 17th of June) or those that were there prop- 
erly supported, the regulars would have met with 
a shameful defeat, and a much more considerable 
loss than they did, which is now known to be ex- 
actly 1,057, killed and wounded. It was for 
their behavior on that occasion that the above 
officers were broke, for I never spared one that 
was accused of cowardice, but brought them 
to immediate trial." 

One of the most interesting perversions of the 
history written by New Englanders is that in 
their emphasis of New Englandism they have 
sometimes signally failed to write even their own 
history as the documents show it. There has 
been much insistence, for instance, on the sup- 
posed absolute 23urity of the English origin of 



NEW ENGLANDISM 447 

the settlers in New England and especially in 
Massachusetts until long after the Revolution. 
Palfrey, in the introduction to his " History of 
New England," says: " The people of New Eng- 
land are a singularly unmixed race. There is 
probably not a county in England occupied by a 
population of purer English blood than they are." 
Senator Lodge, forty years later, in his " His- 
tory of the Revolution," re-echoes Mr. Palfrey's 
words, and says that " the peoj^le were of almost 
pure English blood, with a small infusion of 
Huguenots and a shght mingling in New Hamp- 
shire of Scotch-Irish from Londonderry." Dur- 
ing the past ten years the Secretary of State of 
Massachusetts, by order of the Legislature, has 
been compiling from the state archives the muster 
roll of the Massachusetts soldiers and sailors of 
the Revolutionary War. This does not bear out 
at all what Mr. Palfrey and Mr. Lodge have as- 
serted so emphatically as to the exclusively Eng- 
lish origin of the population of New England 
and, above all, of Massachusetts at this . critical 
time. There is not a familiar Irish name that 
does not occur many times. The fighting race 
was well represented. There were 167 Kelly s 
and 79 Burkes, though by some unaccountable 
circumstance only 24 Sheas. There were 388 
O'Briens and other O's and Macs galore. There 
are Aherns and Brannigans and Bannons and 
Careys and Carrolls and Connellys, Connors and 
Corcorans and Costellos and Cosgroves and Costi- 



448 NEW ENGLANDISM 

gans, and so on right through the alphabet. Curi- 
ously enough there are no Lodges on the muster 
roll, but there is not an Irish name beginning 
with " L " that is not represented. There are no 
less than 69 Larkins and some 20 Learys and 
Lonergans and Lanigans and all the other Celtic 
patronymics in " L." 

Dr. Emmet, who has investigated very care- 
fully the question of the dej^ortation of the Irish 
to this country under Cromwell, says that many 
shiploads of them were sent to Massachusetts in 
the seventeenth century. He declares that enough 
Irish girls were sent over to JNIassachusetts at 
this time to furnish wives for all the immediate 
descendants of the Puritans. There are certainly 
many more Irish names than are dreamt of in the 
very early times. Priscilla Alden's name before 
she tempted John to give her his rather pretty 
name, has never found its w^ay into poetry be- 
cause no poetry would stand it — it was INIullen or 
Mullins. 

Even after the Revolution the place of New- 
England, but especially Massachusetts, in the 
Republic has been sadly misrepresented in our 
American history as a rule, because our school 
historians at least have usually been Bostonians. 
When Washington, in 1789, made his first visit 
as President of the United States to New Eng- 
land, he was received very enthusiastically in Con- 
necticut, though this state had not been wholly 
favorable to the new government, but in Massa- 



NEW ENGLANDISM 449 

chusetts his reception was distinctly cold, and in- 
deed, almost insulting. John Hancock was Gov- 
ernor of this State and he absolutely refused to 
meet the President at the State line, though most 
other Governors had done this, and while Presi- 
dent Washington was in Boston he declined even 
to call on him. The reason for this was the as- 
sumption of a characteristic Massachusetts atti- 
tude. There seems no doubt now that John 
Hancock, not because he was pompous John 
Hancock, not because he ^vas the Governor 
of JMassachusetts — and this idea had been fos- 
tered, among his people — honestly believed that 
the Governor of Massachusetts was a greater 
man in every way than the President of the 
nation. 

There are many who might say that this state 
of mind has endured even to the present time. 
Certainly Massachusetts' representative men have 
constantly set the interests of their commonwealth 
above those of the Union. New England has 
always had a tendency that way. During the 
newspaper agitation over the recent tariff bill one 
of the cartoonists represented the United States 
as a puppy dog with New England as the tail, 
with the caption, " How long is the tail going to 
wag the dog? " Din'ing the second war with 
Great Britain in 1812 New England was the 
most recalcitrant portion of the Union, and an- 
other conceited Governor of the State hampered 
the nation in every way. Our histories for 



450 NEW ENGLANDISM 

schools, at least, have been so written as to pro- 
duce the impression that only the South ever was 
dissatisfied with the Union, inclined to be rebelli- 
ous and ready to talk about the nullification of the 
compact which bound the states together. The 
Hartford convention is mentioned, but not given 
near the place that it deserves, since it represents 
the feeling, very rife at that time, that such a 
procedure as nullification was quite justifiable, 
Twelve delegates from Massachusetts were pres- 
ent in this convention and there was a decided 
spirit of rebellion against the general govern- 
ment because, forsooth, the war had injured 
Boston's business. 

It is not alone in history, however, that New 
England's thoroughgoing admiration for herself 
has served to disturb the attainment of truth by 
the rising generation of Americans. Besides ex- 
aggerating the comparative influence of New 
England in the affairs of the country, they have 
exaggerated the place of favorite New England 
authors in the literature of the world to such 
a degree that growing young America cannot help 
but have a number of false notions of compara- 
tive literary values, which he has to rid himself 
of before he is able to attain any proper appre- 
ciation of world literature or even of English 
hterature. A little group of New England liter- 
ary folk came into prominence about the middle 
of the nineteenth century. Because they were the 
best that New England could produce, appar- 



NEW ENGLANDISM 451 

ently they were considered by New Englanders 
as the best in the world. English critics, of course, 
laughed at their self-complacency, but our New 
England schoolmasters took New England's writ- 
ers so seriously and proceeded to write so much 
about them and make them so much the subject 
of teaching not alone in New England but in 
every part of the country, that now it is almost 
impossible to get our people to accept any true 
standards, since admiration for these quite unim- 
portant New England writers has ruined any 
proper critical literary appreciation. 

As a consequence our rising generations for 
some time have been inclined to take Emerson 
seriously as a great philosopher, writer and 
thinker. They have been very prone to accept 
dear old Oliver Wendell Holmes, kindliest of 
men, charmingest of writers, as a great literary 
man. There have literally been hundreds of Eng- 
lish writers such as these in the past three cen- 
turies of English literary history, who now take 
up at most but a few lines in even large liistories 
of English literature. Taking Emerson seriously 
is fortunately going out of fashion. If one 
wanted a criterion of the depth of thought of the 
generation that accepted him originally and passed 
him along as a significant philosophic prophet, 
then surely one need go no farther. Our op- 
timistic Carlyle, writing in a minor key, looms 
up so much smaller now than a generation ago 
that we can readily realize how New England- 



452 NEW ENGLANDISM 

ism infected literary and philosophic standards. 
What is thus said of Emerson may be repeated, 
with perhaps a little less emphasis, of the other 
writers whom New England has insisted on pro- 
claiming to the world as representative of all that 
was best and highest in literature — because for a 
moment they commanded attention in New Eng- 
land. 

There was a time, not so long ago, when it was 
considered the proper thing in this country to 
talk of Longfellow as a great poet. Of course, 
no one does so any more. The devotion to him 
of so much time in our schools, while so many 
much more important contributions to our Eng- 
lish poetry have but scanty attention paid them, 
is still producing not only a false impression 
on children's minds as to his proper place in liter- 
ature, but is playing sad havoc with literary 
standards generally, so far as they may be the 
subject of teaching. Longfellow was, of course, 
nothing more than a pleasant balladist and a 
writer of conventional thoughts on rather com- 
monplace themes in reasonably smooth verse. For 
really profound thought Longfellow's poetry has 
never a place. His loftiest flights of imagination 
do not bring him anywhere near the great mys- 
teries of human life or the deep thoughts that run 
through men's minds when they are touched to 
the quick. Of the sterner passions of men he 
had scarcely an inkling. 

Whittier, of course, has much more real poetry 



NEW ENGLANDISM 453 

in his little store of verse than Longfellow, but 
Whittier's voice is only a very low treble and his 
religious training was too narrow to permit him 
any breadth of poetic feeling. No one thinks 
now that anything that Whittier wrote will live 
to be read by any but curious students of certain 
anti-slavery movements in connection with the 
history of our civil war. He will have an interest 
for antiquarian litterateurs, scarcely more than 
that. Of James Russell Lowell's rather charm- 
ing academic verse one would prefer to say noth- 
ing, only that the serious study of it in our schools 
leads the present generation to think that he, too, 
must be considered seriously as a poet. It is 
doubtful if Russell Lowell ever thought of himself 
as a poet at all. Appropriate thoughts charm- 
ingly expressed for occasions, in verse reasonably 
tuneful, he could do better than most men of his 
time in America — that was all. Of real poetic 
quality there is almost none. Lowell's verse will 
not be read at all except by the professional 
critic before another generation has passed, and I 
am sure that no one realized this better than 
Lowell himself. 

What Longfellow and Lowell will be remem- 
bered for in the history of ninteenth century liter- 
ature, most of the rising generation of Ameri- 
cans know very little about and the great ma- 
jority of them completely ignore. It is for their 
critical and expository work in introducing great 
foreign authors — really great poets — to the knowl- 



454 NEW ENGLANDISM 

edge of their countrymen that both Longfellow 
and Lowell will deserve the gratitude of all fu- 
ture generations and some of their work in this 
regard will endure when their verse is forgotten. 
Longfellow^'s edition of Dante was not only well 
worth all the time he gave to it during thirty years, 
but represents a monument in American litera- 
ture that will be fondly looked back to by many 
a generation of English-speaking people. Very 
probably of his work in verse the " Golden 
Legend " will mean more to a future generation 
than almost anything else that Longfellow has 
done. Above all, it was precious in making 
Americans realize how j^rofound and how beauti- 
ful had been the work of the poets of Europe 
seven centuries ago. 

In the light of this gradual reduction of the 
value of New England's literature to its lowest 
terms it is extremely amusing to find occasion- 
ally expressions of the value of the New Eng- 
land period in English literature as expressed 
by enthusiastic New Englanders and, above all, 
by ardent — what, for want of a better term we 
must call — New Englanderesses. One of these, 
Miss Helen Winslow, has recently and quite de- 
servedly been made great fun of by Mr. H. W. 
Horwin in an article in the National Review 
(England), headed, "Are Americans Provin- 
cial? " which brings home a few truths to us in 
what concerns our complacent self-satisfaction 
with ourselves. Miss Winslow declares that the 



NEW ENGLANDISM 455 

great Bostonian period was " a literary epoch, 
the like of which has scarcely been known since 
the Elizabethan period." She proclaims that 
" The Papyrus Club [of Boston] is known to 
men of letters and attainments everywhere." She 
notes that " Scott, Balzac and Thackeray re- 
ceived a legal training," just when she is going to 
add that " Robert Grant is also a lawyer." She 
adds that " young people everywhere adore the 
name of Sophie Sweet" (whoever she may be). 
Is it any wonder that the ordinary non- 
New-England American " gets hot under the 
collar " for his countrymen under such circum- 
stances ? 

Two really great masters of literature we had 
in America during the nineteenth century, Poe 
and Hawthorne. Because of our New England 
schoolmasters, as it seems to most of us, Poe has 
never come into his own proper appreciation in 
this country. The French consider him the great 
master of the short story, and that has come to 
occupy such a prominent place in our so-called 
literature in America, that one might look for an 
apotheosis of Poe. He is the one writer whose 
works in both prose and verse have influenced 
deeply the literary men of other countries be- 
sides our own. No other American writer has 
been given the tribute of more than a perfunc- 
tory notice in the non-English-speaking coun- 
tries. In spite of this Poe's name was kept out 
of the Hall of Fame at New York University, 



456 NEW ENGLANDISM 

which was meant to enshrine the memory of our 
greatest thinkers and hterary men, though we 
had generally supposed that the national selec- 
tion of the jury to decide those whose names 
should be honored, would preclude all possibility 
of any narrow sectional influence perverting the 
true purpose of the institution. Poe has never 
been popular in New England, nor has he been 
appreciated at his true worth by the literary cir- 
cles of New England. Their schoolmasterly in- 
fluence has been pervasive enough to keep from 
Poe his true meed of praise among our peo- 
ple generally, though all our poets and liter- 
ary men look up to him as our greatest poetic 
genius. 

As for Hawthorne, there is no doubt that he is 
our greatest American writer in prose. He was 
the one man in New England with a great mes- 
sage. His writings came from deep down in the 
human heart, from the very wellsprings of hu- 
man passion, and had their origin not far from 
where soul touches body in this human compound. 
The English, usually supposed to be slow of 
recognition for things American, acknowledged 
his high worth almost at once. Some of us here 
in America, indeed, have had the feeling that to 
a great extent our people have had to learn the 
lesson of proper appreciation for Hawthorne 
from the English-speaking people across the 
water. To Americans, for years, he was little 
more than a story-writer, not so popular as 



NEW ENGLANDISM 457 

many another writer of stories, and his really 
great qualities were to a great extent ignored. 
Because Puritan New England was out of sym- 
pathy with the mystical spirit of his writings 
only a late and quite inadequate appreciation of 
the value of his work was formed by his country- 
men. Something of this unfortunate lack of appre- 
ciation crept into the schoolmastering of the coun- 
try, and Hawthorne is probably not as highly 
valued in his native land as he is in England, 
though France and Germany have learned to 
look up to him as our greatest of American liter- 
ary men — the one of our writers who, with Poe, 
attracts a world audience. 

When there is question of anything else be- 
sides literature, of course, New England has no 
claims at all to make, and she has stood for many 
unfortunate austere tendencies in American life. 
For anything like public spirit for art or music 
or aesthetics in any department the Puritan soul 
had no use. Consequently our artistic develop- 
ment was seriously delayed as a nation by the 
influence that New England had as the school- 
master of the country. The consequence was that 
our churches were bare and ugly, our homes 
lacking in the spirit of beauty and our municipal- 
ities mere places to live and make money in, but 
with no provision for the enjoyment of life. It 
is in this that New England has doubtless done 
us most harm and it is for this reason that many 
people will re-echo that expression of a descend- 



458 NEW ENGLANDISM 

ant of the Puritans who declares that it would 
have been " an awfully good thing when the 
Puritans landed on Plymouth Rock if only Plym- 
outh Rock had landed on the Puritans." It 
would have saved us an immense deal of inhibition 
of all the art impulses of this country, which 
were almost completely choked off for so long 
by the narrow Puritanism so rampant in New 
EfUgland and so diffusively potent in our educa- 
tional system. 

In conclusion one feels like recalling once more 
Lowell's " Essay on a Certain Condescension 
in Foreigners." Surely the daughter New Eng- 
land, consciously or unconsciously, has treated the 
rest of the country verj^ much like Mother Eng- 
land used to treat nascent English America 
long ago. There are many of us who in recent 
years have come to know New Englandism and 
its proneness to be condescending, who have felt 
very much like paraphrasing, with the addition of 
the adjective " new " here and there, certain 
of Lowell's best-known sentences. The new ver- 
sion will make quite as satisfactory a bit of satire 
on our Down East compatriots as Lowell's hits 
on the mother country and our English cousins 
across the water. Very probably there are more 
people who will appreciate the satire in this new 
application of the great American essayist's words 
than they did in its original form: " It will 
take (New) England a great while to get over 
her airs of patronage toward us, or even passably 



NEW ENGLANDISM 459 

to conceal them. She has a conviction that what- 
ever good there is in us is wholly (New) English, 
when the truth is that we are worth nothing ex- 
cept so far as we have disinfected ourselves of 
(Neo-) Anglicanism." 



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